The Poached Man

Illuminated manuscript panel: a carved knight chess piece standing on a chessboard base, on burnished gold leaf

The Situation

You run a six-hundred-million RIA, and the best advisor in your market works for the firm across town — a hundred-eighty-million book, and unhappy, the recruiter says, since his shop sold to the consolidator and the service model got a script. He is gettable. And here is the part you say only to yourself: you would be hiring him half for the growth and half for the wound, because that firm has lifted two of your people in three years and you would enjoy watching them bleed. The recruiter, sensing the appetite, gets helpful: the advisor's non-solicit is only enforceable-ish, clients follow relationships anyway, and if he resigns the first week of their compliance audit, the disruption doubles. You have the comp grid open. The offer would be real. So would the aim.

The Question

Where does honest competition for a man end and something else begin?

COUNSEL

Prudence decides, so walk the line with open eyes. The man is free. He is not the rival's property, and offering a better seat, openly and on its merits, is the market working as it should — the golden rule survives it, because you have been on the receiving end and called it fair. What doctrine will not bless is the second half of your motive and the recruiter's helpful details. The non-solicit is an obligation the man freely contracted; commutative justice binds him to it and binds you not to purchase its breach at enforceable-ish prices. And the audit-week timing is the tell that the hire has stopped being a hire: at that moment the advisor is no longer a man you are welcoming but a round you are firing, and the Catechism has a word for practices that reduce persons to instruments of profit — or of revenge. Recruit the man. Refuse the weapon. Make the offer you would be content to see your rival make to your own best man: full seat, honest terms, his paper honored to the letter, his clients invited by relationship and not by exported file, on a date chosen for his life and not for their wound.

The Warrant

Contracts are subject to commutative justice which regulates exchanges between persons in accordance with a strict respect for their rights. Commutative justice obliges strictly; it requires safeguarding property rights, paying debts, and fulfilling obligations freely contracted.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶2411

All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this is the law and the prophets.

Matthew 7:12 (Douay-Rheims)

Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶2424

Before Sundown

Strike the audit-week timing from the plan and tell the recruiter the non-solicit will be honored to its letter. If the offer still makes sense on those terms, make it. If it doesn't, you were never hiring a man.

A man may be recruited. A weapon is aimed. Know which one you are hiring.

Canonical Verdict is free. Every citation is verifiable. Where the Church has ruled we say VERDICT; where prudence governs we say COUNSEL — and show the reasoning.