Lawyers and Tarot Readers - The Mission and Business of Hope

 2023. It will probably go down in business history as The Year of Volatility. The lawyers I psychically coach and the lion's share of clients for my Tarot reading service come to me in crisis. Those lawyers are in sustained states of high stress because it's the same situation with their clients: crisis. 

So, here we are wondering: What business are really in and what is the mission? Often when a Tarot reading session wrapped I had second-guessed myself: Could I have done better with this or that? Currently lawyers often experience the same self-doubt. 

The stress of this questioning headed me back to a marketing workshop I had taken in the late 1980s. It introduced me to the thinking of the late Harvard Business School Marketing Professor Ted Levitt.

Levitt mandated that organizations, at least those intent on growth, keep asking themselves: What business are we really in? Had the railroads answered "transportation," they would have continued flourishing. Probably they would have acquired airlines and auto companies. Levitt formalized that principle in his iconic essay in "Marketing Myopia," which had been published in the Harvard Business Review.

After I reached back in time to the genius of Levitt, the Ah-Ha Moment came fast. The Grand Epiphany: I am in the business of hope. So are lawyers. The main article in the June 2023 edition of Psychology Today is, you got it, hope. It documents:

"High-hope people see, and respond to, the world differently, and they use their thoughts to focus on what they can control."

In Tarot readings if clients gain hope they are on the way to exiting their crisis state. That’s because they experience it from a fresh perspective. Also they acquire the confidence to believe in their assessments of a situation and can then be smart in addressing it. In itself that can prevent some kinds of crises. 

Now, post-Tarot reading, I reverse-engineer the tone and the content to determine if I had delivered on hope.

Top lawyers - that is, the ones whose cases you read about in the media - also have to be in the business of hope. Too often clients come to them in major trouble.

Take giant fast-food corporation McDonald's USA. This is the era of ESG values - that is, the expectation that businesses shift from the single-dimension concern for investors to also tending to the wants and needs of other stakeholders. Those range from employees/franchisees to customers to communities.

In this ESG era society usually is not on the side of the corporation. McDonald's USA got hit with "Crawford." More than 50 Black former franchise owners had contended racial discrimination. Law firm Paul Weiss gave McDonald’s hope that it would transcend the raw force of public opinion and find justice. In addition that corporation could send out the message: We are not afraid. Fear invites bullying. That's because "Crawford v McDonald's USA" has been dismissed.

“Crawford” had been dismissed. Incidentally, from the get-go of the arrival of ESG values the chairperson of Paul Weiss Brad Karp created the first-ever law-firm specialized ESG practice. That was and is to give all business hope that they can hold their ground when it comes to law, no matter how volatile is public opinion about values.

No surprise, Disney CEO Bob Iger turned to litigation to duke it out with the governor on what are essentially cultural values issues.

There is so much more about lawyers and the business of hope.

Through the amazing $140 million jury award in "Hulk Hogan v Gawker" lawyer Charles Harder gave celebrities hope they could protect their privacy.

In the long-running Rhode Island lead paint litigation, which was tossed by the RI Supreme Court, Jones Day's Mickey Pohl gave large corporations hope they could push back against activist state attorneys general. The Pohl legal team stuck with opposing the class action, all the way to the state Supreme Court. It was tossed.

Here in less evidence-based matters, during the past several weeks I conjured up for several laid-off professionals this: They could learn enough from that negative experience to build more solid platforms for success. Not that the pain of being axed went away. Not that there was no terror about the future. What mattered to them and, of course, to me was that they could grab onto hope. And hold onto it. 

Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach.

Don't Give Up Before the Miracle.

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