The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek

Here’s an excerpt from this Akin Gump piece:

Legal developments and changes in an employee’s job or the nature of the company’s competition can cause employers’ restrictive covenant agreements to become outdated and potentially unenforceable. Periodic review and maintenance of these agreements is crucial to ensure employers get the maximum available legal protection from theft of their customer base and business opportunity, employee talent and confidential information.

Because they impede employees’ ability to change jobs freely, noncompetition agreements, as well as provisions barring solicitations of former customers or employees, often are subject to more stringent rules than ordinary contracts. Some states, like California, Oklahoma, Montana and North Dakota, effectively ban noncompetition agreements altogether outside the context of the sale of a business. Others, like Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Oregon and soon Washington state, limit the types of workers to which they can apply or require that other elements be present.