Everyone else at work uses as PC...

So I just recently switched over and got a refurbished MBP and I love it! I have been having some trouble at work, though. Mostly everyone uses Windows, and every reference to a file on our network (.e.g. a link to a file in an email) is something like "\\network\folder\folder\file.extension"
Instead of being able to copy and paste those links into finder (or wherever) I instead have to open up a new finder window, and manually connect to the network drive, and then navigate my way through all the folders to get to the file.

Is there a better way to do this? Is there a program or something that will just translate the links so I can just click on them or paste them in somewhere?

I get them as well, they are a pain, but there is not much you can do apart from following the link manually

Not a lot of consolation - but you could copy the link, paste it into Finder's connect to server dialog, put smb: (or cifs: ) in front of it and change the backslashes to forward (\\network\folder\folder\file.extension -> smb://network/folder/folder/file.extension).

Write an Applescript to do it for you, thats what I do with network drives on my own network. Then I just set the script up as a login item, and viola, instant network drives just like in Windows.