Did the American Bar Association make Love Your Lawyer Day official?

Not quite. The council of the ABA's Law Practice Division adopted a measure recognising the day in October 2015, which is one division's action rather than association-wide ABA policy, and it carries no legal force.

Is Love Your Lawyer Day the same as Law Day or Be Kind to Lawyers Day?

No, all three are separate. Law Day falls on May 1 and is set by United States statute, Be Kind to Lawyers Day falls on the second Tuesday in April, and Love Your Lawyer Day is the first Friday in November.

Is I Love My Lawyer Day a different holiday?

No, it is this day's original name. The founding association's own announcements describe the observance as formerly I Love My Lawyer Day.

Love Your Lawyer Day

Next celebratedFriday, November 6, 2026

Lawyers are asked to give an hour of pro bono work on the first Friday in November, and everyone else is asked to skip the lawyer jokes for the day.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated August 30, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEFirst Friday in November

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYCareers

SUBCATEGORYLegal

ORIGIN

Institutional Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

American Lawyers Public Image Association (ALPIA)

FIRST OBSERVED

2001

“The ABA Law Practice Division Council enacted its recognition on 22 October 2015, fourteen years after ALPIA began the day as I Love My Lawyer Day.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

An image association's day, later enacted by an ABA division.

The American Lawyers Public Image Association, founded in 2000 by Fort Lauderdale attorney and legal marketer Nader Anise, began the observance in 2001 and ran it that first year as I Love My Lawyer Day. On 22 October 2015 the council of the American Bar Association's Law Practice Division adopted a measure recognising the first Friday of November as Love Your Lawyer Day, on a proposal from the division's Work/Life Balance Task Force.

Read ALPIA's own announcementvia prnewswire.com

INTRO

An unsatisfactory 21 percent: the bar's case for a holiday

Love Your Lawyer Day exists because of a number. Gallup asked Americans in December 2014 how they rated lawyers for honesty and ethics. Just 21 percent said high or very high.

A council of American lawyers read that figure and called it unsatisfactory. It was also the best score in the trend Gallup printed alongside it.

Gallup put its own back catalogue on page three of the same document. Lawyers appear in that trend sixteen times, going back to 1999. The unsatisfactory 21 percent is the highest of them.

The day is what that argument produced. Whether one day a year can shift how a profession is seen is a question lawyers have argued in public, at some volume.

ORIGINS

Love Your Lawyer Day history

INTRODUCTION

Lawyer jokes are not a modern habit. The document that put this day on an American Bar Association calendar opens by observing that literature "is rife with lawyer bashing dated back hundreds of years". What a profession can do about a head start that long is the question this observance was built to answer.

CHAPTER 01

A marketer builds an association

Nader Anise practises law in Fort Lauderdale and works as a legal marketer. In 2000 he founded the American Lawyers Public Image Association, whose stated single purpose was promoting a positive public image of lawyers.

A year later ALPIA started a day of its own. It ran under a different name at first, I Love My Lawyer Day, and settled on the first Friday of November. Nothing outside the association's own later accounts documents the fourteen years that followed.

The push came in September 2015. ALPIA declared an International Love Your Lawyer Day for that November, the first time the observance was aimed beyond the United States.

CHAPTER 02

The bar's own division signs on

A month after that announcement, the council of the ABA's Law Practice Division adopted a measure recognising the day. It was dated 22 October and came from the division's Work/Life Balance Task Force.

Its first section asks that the first Friday of November be recognised as Love Your Lawyer Day, a day for the public to thank lawyers for their contributions to the public good and the administration of justice.

CHAPTER 03

The founder goes quiet

Then the association's trail goes cold. The last version of its website held by the Internet Archive was captured in March 2023. It was still advertising the November 2019 observance, and the domain now serves a parked search page.

Who runs the day now is not documented. No successor to the association has been identified.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Anise founds ALPIA

Nader Anise sets up the American Lawyers Public Image Association in Florida to work on the profession's public image.

First observance, under another name

ALPIA runs the day for the first time, calling it I Love My Lawyer Day.

Pew ranks lawyers last

A Pew Research Center survey places lawyers at the bottom of ten occupations for contribution to society.

ALPIA announces its fifteenth

A September announcement bills the coming observance as the fifteenth annual and extends it internationally.

An ABA division enacts recognition

On 22 October the Law Practice Division Council adopts a measure recognising the first Friday of November.

The Florida Bar reports the response

The Bar's own news outlet marks the sixteenth annual observance and describes the previous year's social media traffic.

BY THE NUMBERS

Love Your Lawyer Day by the Numbers

18%: US adults saying lawyers contribute a lot
$20: Suggested charity fine per lawyer joke
15,000+: Posts on the 2015 observance
1,374,720: US lawyers counted in 2025

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Love Your Lawyer Day Matters

SERVICE

An appreciation day whose formal request is free legal work.

The measure the ABA's Law Practice Division adopted does not stop at applause. Its second section urges lawyers to mark the day by providing pro bono legal services and supporting charitable causes that promote the administration of justice.

STANDING

No statute stands behind it

The only lawyer-related day written into United States law is Law Day, which the code fixes on May 1. Love Your Lawyer Day has no statute and no presidential proclamation, so what standing it has comes from the profession itself.

CULTURE

Television gets named in the text

The measure singles out entertainment as part of what it is arguing against. It states that the portrayal of lawyers in American popular culture, including on television and in cinema, is largely negative and promotes a negative stereotype of lawyers in society.

Lawyers are always painted as the bad guy, even if they pull off some crazy Houdini-esque maneuvers to help their clients.

Nader AniseExecutive Director, American Lawyers Public Image Association

A holiday to appreciate people created and promoted by those same people.

Above the LawLegal news and commentary site

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

How to Observe Love Your Lawyer Day

Read the text the bar division adopted

The measure lays out its reasoning in a stack of whereas clauses before it reaches the ask. It is worth reading if you want to see what a professional body thought it was fixing.

Thank the lawyer who handled your case

Nader Anise's own ask was narrow and easy to act on: reach out to a lawyer you know and thank them for the case they worked or the pro bono hours they put in. He put the same ask to The Florida Bar's news outlet, calling the day a win-win for the legal industry.

Hold the lawyer jokes for the day

The association's site put it flatly, that no lawyer jokes and no lawyer bashing are permitted on the day. Its announcement singled out late-night talk show hosts and asked anyone who slipped to send a donation to a charity of their choice.

Put an hour into pro bono work

ALPIA asked every practising American attorney to do at least one hour of pro bono work on the day. The alternative it offered was donating the equivalent of one billable hour to Childreach International or the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Post using the day's official hashtag

The association named #LoveYourLawyerDay as the official tag for pictures, video and comments. The Florida Bar's social media team ran its own recognition on that tag.

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