Non-lawyer Steve Hughes has a weblog of his own and lots of experience in advertising and sales promotion in St. Louis. Yet, he apparently failed to let any members of the blawgisphere know about the launching of the very first National Be Kind to Lawyers Day, which was “celebrated” on April 8, 2008.
Of course, if Steve had Googled or Yahoo!’d “Lawyers Day,” he might have saved himself a lot of effort and felt a bit less ignored. The very first search result is our posting from last September, which suggested that the world is “not quite ready for Love Lawyers Day.” It echoed a theme that we had sounded two years prior, when we pointed to the lukewarm reception for the August 31st event called “Love Litigating Lawyers Day.”
I don’t know why N.B.K.L.D was such a flop (other than the universal dread and dislike of lawyers). Hughes, who has worked with lawyers “for several years in the presentation skills arena,” would seem to have been the right person to launch the Day. According to his weblog, Steve is “the Presentation Guy,” and his bio boasts of years in advertising and sales promotion with top firms. His Hit Your Stride organization — which has the slogan “helping clients create & deliver world-class presentations” — calls itself
“a high-impact communication resource for organizations who want to create, deliver and profit from world-class presentations.”
On March 31st, Hughes and Hit Your Stride put out an upbeat press release for Be Kind to Lawyers Day. The press release said:
Tuesday, April 8th is the first-ever National Be Kind To Lawyers Day and is designed to give an ounce or two of respect to the men and women who daily tip the scales of justice. “In most surveys lawyers rank as the least respected profession and that includes celebrity paparazzi and used car salesmen,” says National Be Kind To Lawyers Day creator Steve Hughes.
It goes on to explain that “The early April date was selected because it is ideally situated between April Fool’s Day and Tax Day April 15th.” Steve adds that “The best part of National Be Kind To Lawyers Day is that people can participate as much or as little as they choose.” Sadly, whether or not they knew it, the American public chose not to participate. As far as I can tell, the holiday went virtually unnoticed. Indeed, I have the feeing that very lawyers received one of the two free Be Nice To Lawyers Day greetings cards from 123greetings.com.
You can click to read more about The N.B.K.T.L. Story, including suggestions — better late than never — on just how to particpate. [One of the better suggestions: “If you can’t abstain, tell your funniest lawyer joke but switch out the lawyer with your profession. (I bet it’s still funny.)” Your Editor bets it’s not quite as funny.] There’s even a page of allegedly “Cool Lawyer Facts.” I’d say most of them — like reminding us that Ozzie Nelson had a law degree — are just room temperature.
All in all, I can’t whip up enough enthusiasm for National Be Kind to Lawyers Day to even come up with a related haiku or senryu poem. Instead, I’ll leave you with the image of Lawyer Appreciation Day that Wiley first presented at Non Sequitur in 1993:
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