A couple of months ago I wrote about noncompete covenants in California, and how the peculiarities of California employment law around noncompetition issues impacts hiring and firing California employees as well as buying businesses in California.

Many times, when small business owners are looking for an employment agreement form, they may just download a document or use an old template.  This works in the majority of cases when no legal disputes regarding employment arises.  Of course, attorneys and experienced managers understand that competent contract authoring is all about controlling how disputes are resolved - if there is no dispute, the contract language doesn’t come into play.  To sophisticated managers, attorneys and investors, that seems a lot like crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Accordingly, it’s critical that employers and attorneys find templates and work product precedent that are geared towards the relevant jurisdiction.  You can search across thousands of employment agreements by governing law provisions here.  In the case of California employment agreements, here is a great resource to browse thousands of California Employment Agreements, or you can combine full text searching across California employment agreements.

In our business, we’ve been fortunate enough to avoid any serious employment related disputes that have resulted in litigation.  However, we recently have had to deal with a specific example of a former consultant hiring away an employee despite a variety of non-compete and non-solicitation clauses, and the existence of appropriate contract language has been extremely helpful to us in negotiating an appropriate resolution.

Please let me know if you are aware of any additional resources we can share, or comment directly below.