ESTJ 8w9 Characters

Jessica is a power-house of a lawyer who not only never loses a case (a fact she asserts with pride), but has built an entire firm around her strong reputation. She has hired a litany of top attorneys and paralegals to make her firm one of the most competitive and highly paid in the business, but she never puts personal sentiment or loyalty ahead of what is financially workable—on more than one occasion, refusing to bankroll cases she sees them “losing” and thinking of cases in terms of win/lose = reputation. She sees pro-bono cases as “social” coinage, a way to tell people they are a compassionate firm, besides one that makes several billion dollars a year. The basic buy-in for a partnership is in the millions, and she stands by the laws of her firm, despite personal sentiments. Now, it would be easy to type Jessica as an ENTJ, but in actuality, she’s a lot softer than Harvey, and a lot easier to fool. Many of her dire predictions and fears come from past incidents (knowing what people are like, because of her long work association with them). Jessica gets surprised by betrayal, because she lacks high enough intuition to spot it coming and head it off. She is shocked to find out her colleague is embezzling from the firm, then believes him when he says he did it for his wife and is shocked again, to learn he has been keeping his mistress with it instead; Jessica fears once his wife dies he will come back and cause trouble, which is what he does, based on the man he is. She spreads his affair around town, to warn others so he won’t equally blindside or take them in. Jessica intends to retire before she turns 40, then to have a normal domestic life (“having achieved everything I intended, I want to try other things”)—showing an ESTJ’s tendency to want a husband and kids after they get the career that matters to them. Unlike Harvey, Jessica knows what firms are supposed to do to be taken seriously—it’s not just about winning but proving to the public that they are compassionate. She is a lot more cautious than him, and disapproves of the risks he takes and the way he breaks the law (pretending Mike has a law degree). Jessica doesn’t expose her emotions often, but has a deep affection for some of her colleagues and looks after their best interests. She also cares about doing good for the public and wishes Harvey did not come across as so cold and inconsiderate (she says he needs to “grow a heart”).

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To Jessica, everything is a game of power and control. If someone attacks her, she has to retaliate and take them down a notch, or gives Harvey permission to do it in her place. She tells Mike early on there’s no room to be “soft” (emotional) at the firm and that he should have shredded Rachel on the stand when he saw a weakness in her (personal information is a valuable resource). Sometimes, Jessica goes out of her way to strong-arm a colleague to prove she has the upper hand. When someone’s wife dies, at the funeral, instead of just showing up for moral support, she is already strategizing about how to ensure this man does not come back to the firm to “get revenge,” since she was blackmailing him the last several years into retirement, by threatening to expose his marital infidelity to his wife. Jessica, early in her career, saw and opportunity and wanted it, so she got her lead competition drunk and made sure she turned up “stark naked” and “hung over” in the professor’s classroom, so Jessica would get the better write-up. She adamantly denies this many times, insisting that she did not do it on purpose, until she finally admits she did it on purpose to get ahead in her career, and she would “do it again.” Jessica likes Harvey because he will bust balls and take no prisoners, but doesn’t like him challenging her authority; she threatens to demote him or kick him out the door if he doesn’t toe the line she sets in the sand. Jessica can remain totally calm in the face of just about anything, and not show any weaknesses for anyone else to sink their teeth into. She will also go to bad for Harvey when he needs it, but gets annoyed with him for disruptions or bad blood with his colleagues.