Meet Keith Cooper

We were lucky to catch up with Keith Cooper recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Keith with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

That’s easy: My father. He is about to turn 96 and still works full time as a senior partner in a major international law firm. Every single day, without exception, he’s physically in the office from 10:00 to 7:00. While in his 90’s, he literally went to work with pneumonia. He travelled to France for a single weekend and headed straight to the office after returning and landing at LAX on Monday morning. He is a machine.

His work ethic inspires me. When I feel tired, I think of him and realize there’s never an excuse for laziness. I mean, I get jetlag simply commuting to the office. But whenever I feel tired or sick I think about his dedication to his clients and his craft. That perhaps someday there will be a time to rest, but that day cannot be today. Clients have needs and their needs must come before my own. I have a job to do, and I need to get it done.

If I have learned anything from my father, it is to persevere. Keep grinding. Keep moving forward. Otherwise, I will stagnate, die and not be any good to anyone. It’s why I started a brand-new law firm with Kat Iravani. Others tried to push me into early retirement. But I said no. I’m just getting started.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m extremely fortunate. For my entire life I have been infatuated with video games and the video game business. I also grew up as a music and entertainment industry baby and became directly involved in it as a young adult and entrepreneur. I co-founded an entertainment promotion company and a video-streaming business. I worked for the David Geffen Company and The Recording Academy (GRAMMY Awards).

So, the fact that I now have the privilege to work as a lawyer on video game, music, business, intellectual property, and other entertainment-related matters is exciting. I love the subject matter. It often does not feel like work. It does have its share of challenges, but my job is to help people and solve their problems. Every day is different. It’s rarely boring.

And now it’s more exciting than ever. I’ve started the brand-new law firm Cooper & Iravani, and it’s invigorating. It offers new and different challenges, but renewed optimism as well. Kat (Iravani) and I are building something; and, at the moment, the sky is the limit. Our future is ours to make of it what we will. And I’m motivated to succeed. Not just for myself, but for Kat and my wife Allison, without whose support this could not have happened.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Once again, I have my father to thank. From an early age he instilled in me the values that should be most important for a lawyer: Honesty, integrity and ethics. I’m not religious, but I learned to live by the Golden Rule: Treat everyone the way you would like them to treat you. If you want to be respected, then treat everyone with respect.

I learned that you only own two things in life: Your time and your reputation. In life, you are either spending time or wasting it. Try not to waste it. Where your reputation is concerned, it both precedes you and follows you everywhere you go. So, protect it. If you have a reputation as an ass, that is exactly how you will be treated. If you have a reputation for dishonesty, no one is going to trust you. But if you are honest and sincere, people will respect that and appreciate it. And be compassionate. That is something my wife Allison has taught me: Always be considerate of other people’s needs and feelings.

These values will serve you well as a young businessperson or attorney. For example, never use a strong negotiating position to humiliate the other side or try to bury them. Leave them with their dignity intact. It may be expedient to extract every possible concession from them, but someday you might regret it. Someday it might be them with all the leverage, but now they will be out for vengeance.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

In the words of songwriter Anna Nalick: Breath. Just Breath.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with everything life and work can throw at you. But there simply is no way to tackle everything, everywhere all at once (great movie!). But if you dwell on all the myriad challenges in front of you it becomes unmanageable. Instead, remember that when walking you have to simply put one foot in front of the other, and you will eventually get to where you need to go. You can’t teleport to where you want to go. You need to walk there. One step at a time. And with perseverance you will eventually arrive at your destination. Not by thinking about everything you need to do, but by just doing it, one step at a time. So, take a breath, and just start walking.

Bill Murray in Groundhog Day offered another great piece of advice. Life is about making decisions and living with them. That’s it. Every day we are confronted with choices, some of which can be overwhelming. Some of which we have time to consider and some of which we don’t. So, we all just need to make a decision and move on. No regrets. Don’t dwell on it. It’s like trying to drive while only looking in the rearview mirror. Not the best way to focus on the road ahead.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ci-lawgroup.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-cooper-54ba17b/
• Other: [email protected]