Tuesday is Be Kind to Lawyers Day

One man is trying to bring some respect to lawyers and give them the credit they don’t always get. And he’s started an international holiday to do it.

Tuesday is International Be Kind to Lawyers Day, a day started by Steve Hughes, a non-lawyer who works to help people improve their presentation skills. Hughes, from St. Louis, started bekindtolawyers.com and on the site lists why he started the holiday, and why he chose today as the day.

According to the site, Hughes worked with a lot of lawyers, and when he mentioned that to people they usually felt sorry for him and had pity on him. However, Hughes likes the lawyers he worked with, and thought the disdain people felt was wrong.

“Then one day as Steve was putting away the decorations from National Bubble Wrap Day (late January) his thoughts drifted to National Ice Cream Day and then it struck him. Why not a special day for lawyers? Lawyers are just as good as bubble wrap and ice cream, in fact, in many ways they’re better.”

And that’s how International Be Kind To Lawyers Day was born.

He chose the second Tuesday of April as the date because it’s strategically located between April Fools’ Day and Tax Day, according to the site “after extensive planning, detailed research and countless reviews by a team of legal experts.”

Hughes suggests ways to celebrate, including take your favorite lawyer out to breakfast or lunch (make sure it’s not billable), switch your phone’s ring tone to the “dah-dah” from NBC’s “Law and Order” and if you accidentally say something wrong or inappropriate on this day, just follow it up with the words “strike that from the record,” then continue talking as if nothing happened.”