Ernest J. Sargeant was a superb corporate lawyer, a highly valued servant of The American Law Institute, and a leader in a venerable Boston law firm. At the time Ernie joined it in 1947, the firm was called Ropes, Gray, Best, Coolidge & Rugg. As law firms became larger and their names smaller, the firm became Ropes & Gray, although Ernie always referred to it (as shall I) as “Ropes Gray.”

I first knew Ernie as the leader, pitcher, and head cheerleader for the Ropes Gray team in a slow-pitch softball league made up of Boston law firms. The casual observer of the force with which Ernie exhorted his team would have assumed that Ernie believed that the reputation, if not the very existence of his firm, depended on the team’s success. On a more informed inspection, however, it was apparent that Ernie, with his infectious smile, was simply enjoying himself and well understood the significance of the contest in the order of things.

Ernest James Sargeant was born in Spokane, Washington, on September 26, 1918, the son of Ernest E. and Louise (McWinnie) Sargeant. He was graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane and then attended Harvard College from which he was graduated cum laude in the class of 1940. His law-school career was interrupted by four years of military service in the China Burma India theater during World War II, in which he rose to the rank of captain in the army. Following that service he returned to the Harvard Law School and was graduated magna cum laude in 1947 (as of the class of 1943). He became an associate at Ropes Gray. In 1950, he was recalled to active duty in the Korean War and served two years in the Office of the Army Department Counselor in the Pentagon.

Ernie became a partner in Ropes Gray in 1956 and of counsel in 1991. He was the hiring partner for generations of new associates. Each year Ernie and Hélène, who were married in 1944, invited the entire class of first-year associates to dinner at their home. For many years Ernie was the firm’s chief operating officer.

Ernie had a strong association with Harvard University. He was a gifted lecturer at Harvard Law School for about 30 years, teaching a seminar on corporate planning and counseling. He led his class for the Harvard College Fund. He served as graduate treasurer of the Harvard Law Review and established the Ernest J. Sargeant Scholarship Fund at Harvard College.

Ernie died at the age of 89 on January 26, 2008, survived by his wife of 64 years, Hélène. At his memorial service last February in Harvard Yard, we learned that in Washington State environs Ernie was known as “Bud” and to his nephews and nieces as “Uncle Bud.” As a youth he had worked on a farm in Jerome, Idaho, that his father had “homesteaded.”

His former partner Tom O’Donnell commented at the memorial service: “Ernie, as we all know, had a formidable personality. He loved to engage in warm discussions of legal and policy issues. He was not a shy person. When you asserted something and Ernie responded: ‘Do you mean to tell me. . . ?’ you knew right away that he did not agree with you. He once noted reassuringly: ‘Just because I’m shouting doesn’t mean I’m angry.’”

Ernie was a member of the Institute for 50 years and of the Council for 29 years before taking emeritus status in 2001. Additionally, he served on the Investment Committee for 33 years, chairing it for 22 of those years. He was an Adviser for the Institute’s projects on the Federal Securities Code and Corporate Governance. The Institute’s Corporate Governance Project greatly benefited from Ernie’s wisdom, judgment, and integrity of thought derived from years of dealing with corporate executives, directors, shareholders, and academics. As Vice Chair of the ad hoc committee to create the Institute’s A. James Casner Reporter’s Chair, Ernie was instrumental in raising the funds to endow the Chair. Ernie was a driving force behind regular gatherings of ALI members in the Boston area at Ropes Gray. He and Hélène attended the event held last fall at which Ernie proudly told me he had attained his 90th year.

I had hoped that Ernie had put into his own words observations about the major activities of his life. Perhaps he had written of the circumstances that had led him to Harvard College from eastern Washington State, of his law teaching and extensive corporate practice, of his six years of military service, of his love of fishing that often led Ernie and Hélène to the northwest (and once even to Iceland), or of his involvement in town affairs in his home town of Wellesley where, among other things, he served as chair of the advisory committee that counseled the town meeting on fiscal matters. Had he at least written of his participation in Institute affairs, particularly of his role as member of its Investment Committee

I turned, therefore, to class reports of Ernie’s Harvard College class, often a source of interesting and sometimes banal information. In 1965, at the time of his 25th reunion, Ernie, a man of few but precise words, provided me with only this:

My law practice has been with the same law firm and marriage with the same wife; I have no interest whatsoever in changing either of these.

With greater anticipation, I looked at the 1990 50th-reunion report of his college class. Here was Ernie at the end of his years of practice and in the middle years of his service as Chair of the Institute’s Investment Committee. Surely he had much to record. But no. His entire report, a model of brevity and consistency, reads:

I have spent forty-six years with the same wife and forty-three years with the same law firm. I continue to have no interest in changing either of these.

What then can be said of this able, confident, and respected man with a ready smile and resplendent good will? In the Institute, his major service lay fully out of the sight of its members and largely noticed only by those members of the Council who served with him on the Investment Committee. There, I am told, he was a tower of strength and leadership. He was direct and up front. He knew the subject. He could speak the language of the investment advisers. He would effectively cross-examine them. Then, from time to time, he would report to the Council on the Institute’s investments in succinct and persuasive terms. He instilled confidence, with good cause, in the manner in which the investments of the Institute were handled.

The Institute is stronger because of the effective service of this formidable but amiable man who had roots in the far Northwest and then flourished in the heart of Boston’s legal community.

Herbert P. Wilkins

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Minute in Remembrance