Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing, and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series in which we introduce a variety of topics that looks to educate and deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. To that end, this is Part XIII and the last blog of our series on “Best Practices for Reducing Litigation Risks when Hiring from Competitors.” In Part XII, we hammered on the importance of “Knowing Who You Are Hiring” in an attempt to minimize and mitigate the risk of litigation for hiring from a competitor. Regarding this practice, we mentioned that it is critical for employers to comprehensively understand the facts to effectively minimize and accurately evaluate the risk of litigation involving hiring from competitors. Most importantly, the hiring employer must take a proactive step towards knowing precisely whom they would be hiring. Key information the employer must know include, but is not limited to, (1) the current job title of the candidate, (2) the extent of the candidate’s knowledge of and exposure to competitively valuable information, such as trade secrets or other proprietary information, belonging to the competitor, (3) the candidate’s responsibility over relationships with key clients, (4) the candidate’s importance to the competitor’s business, and (5) the full scope of a candidate’s responsibilities to the competitor (geographically and/or substantively).

As a continuation of this series, we now move our discussion forward by hammering on the importance of “Knowing how Litigious the Industry is,” which is another thing the hiring employer may have to consider in an attempt to avoid, minimize, and/or mitigate the risk of litigation for hiring from a competitor.

Hiring from Competitors – Know the Litigiousness of the Industry

As a best practice and a way of effectively evaluating the potential risks of hiring an individual from a competitor, employers should take proactive steps to understand and know the litigiousness of the particular industry in which they operate. In this regard, it is advisable for employers to familiarize themselves with the general hiring customs of the industry in which they operate, especially if hiring from competitors is a frequent trend. One of the most critical things an employer should be aware of concerns the aggressiveness (if at all it happens) of competitors and other employers when seeking the enforcement of post-employment restrictive agreements and covenants.

In less-competitive industries, such as retail or advertising, employees are known to carry along their personal clients with them as they frequently move from one employer to another. While litigations are relatively rare in these industries, employers do not prioritize the enforcement of restrictive covenants. However, in hyper-competitive industries, such as insurance and technology, employers are known to jealously, proactively, and aggressively protect and guard clients and information. Accordingly, these industries are known to experience significantly high rates of litigations related to the breach of restrictive covenants.

One notable aspect regarding this issue regards how, with the aim of reducing litigation costs, competitors in industries, such as finance, collaborate and join forces to establish written protocols that govern how clients are solicited when brokers switch firms. Essentially, these protocols are aimed at subjecting brokers switching firms to sternly enforced client non-solicitation agreements.

With that, we have concluded this series by providing you with a list of twelve steps and things a hiring employer may take or do as a way of avoiding and reducing the risk of litigation for hiring from a competitor.

In addition to striving to be unusually motivated®, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education in the series in progress and others to be introduced. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.