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Wachtell Partner Calls Out Entire Firm In The Most Passive-Aggressive Memo Ever

Do you have an English degree and low self-worth? Perhaps try Wachtell?

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Ed Herlihy

Ed Herlihy

There are some employers out there who, when surrounded by the lazy and incompetent, would dig deep into their Dale Carnegie or Six Sigma voodoo and endeavor to inspire their charges. Others just throw a temper tantrum and hurl books at coworkers. But it is the unique specimen who drafts a short memo to the entire firm imploring them to read a moderately obscure essay about how f**king incompetent they are.

Ed Herlihy is, apparently, of this rare last sort. And to borrow from the text he recommends, “there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze.”

The longtime Wachtell partner and Executive Committee co-chair sent out an all-hands memo last week, inviting his employees to a little impromptu book club. Eschewing Oprah’s latest selection, Herlihy opted for a classic of late nineteenth century Americana:

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That is some master class passive-aggression. The first tip we received conveyed the alarm:

Partners, associates, and support staff in a furious panic to see this left on their desks.

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Well, that’s assuming people sat down and read the piece, which I’ve gotta say is billable time the firm’s never getting back.

Elbert Hubbard’s “A Message To Garcia” was famous for much of the last century as a paean to self-starters who tackle a problem head-on without asking to have their hand held throughout the process. Which is a lovely message as far as it goes. More people need to approach life as problem solvers.

Especially lawyers, who have a tendency to waste bandwidth covering their flanks and pinpointing blame, instead of simply confronting obstacles — probably of their own making — directly.

And if that’s all the story conveyed, it would be a nice little motivational piece.

But the essay was also the cheap “Golly, Aren’t Millennials The Worst?” column of its era, with an added pinch of Atlas Shrugged. Framed around the Spanish-American conflict, the piece rips employees everywhere for trying to learn their craft (“[i]t is not book-learning young men need”), as opposed to falling ass-backward into success on the strength of their “initiative.” Which, of course, is what the war hero in the story (supposedly) did and what the, by extension, equally courageous managers of the world did. It’s less “Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People” and more “John Galt Joins The Green Lantern Corps.”

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Whether that’s the message Herlihy intended to send or not we don’t know — he did not respond to our email seeking comment — but it seems as though that’s what some of the Wachtell recipients took from it when they spiraled into “furious panic.”

In the meantime, I’d give double points to the associate willing to take the initiative and respond with a memo to Herlihy with this excellent story they recommend reading:

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I’ve got a feeling Herlihy might think that’s pretty funny.

Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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