Julie Fleming-Brown has invited me to join the second annual “Lawyer’s Appreciate…” campaign. I’m far from becoming a lawyer (3 1/2 years to be exact), but I’ve worked for them long enough that I have some sense of what makes their lives easier. So here goes!

1) First and foremost, Lawyers appreciate competent staff who work as an integral part of their team to make their lives easier and their client’s business get taken care of more smoothly. Appreciate and encourage your legal staff to become a member of your team in 2008!

2) Lawyers appreciate clients that work with them, not against them. If we take the time to learn about you and your business/legal problem, please understand that our advice is meant to help you, not hurt you, and that the ramifications of disregarding our advice may be far-reaching.

3) Lawyers appreciate clear, realistic deadlines and fair co-counsel. I’ve pulled many a holiday weekend all-nighter because co-counsel in litigation matters just love to set things up so that the other side gets screwed into having a day-after-the-holiday filing. Not very nice, people. So, too, do corporate attorneys get sucked into weekend-long work at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon by their clients only to have the client pull the plug late Sunday night. It would be nice if everything wasn’t made out to be such an emergency all the time. (Although if lawyers would stop being such procrastinators, that might instill more confidence in clients that the work will be completed in a timely manner!)

4) Lawyers appreciate legal bloggers. Being able to network with people outside your immediate firm/city is immensely helpful and there are some fantastic bloggers out there sharing their tips and tricks with their colleagues.

5) Lawyers appreciate their families. It takes a lot of dedication to be the spouse or child of a lawyer. It’s a demanding service business that takes a lot out of a person, but good clients, good firms and advances in technology are helping to make the lawyer life a bit more flexible.

Those are my five things that lawyers appreciate. I look forward to reading the other bloggers’ entries and appreciate having been included this year. I am supposed to tag three people so I tag Zuska, Lawyer Mama and Shelley.