Think Twice Before Taking Clients With You

A Business' greatest assets are its clients.  But those clients have legs.  And when they walk, the business follows. 

Daniel A. Lublin, Metro Toronto News -
Published Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Nothing infuriates a company more than news of an ex-employee soliciting away its most prized assets: the clients.  But clients, much like those employees, are not sedentary.  Seldom are they attracted to one company or another exclusively by virtue of the services they are offered.  Rather, their affiliation lies with the relationships that are build and the key employees who have built them.

Courts recognize that business relationships follow the employees who possess them and permit employers to protect their most valuable assets through contractual and equitable limits.  In today's employment contract, it is commonplace to find any combination of non-solicitation, non-competition and confidentiality clauses restricting your ability to work for the competition or solicit your book of business on the way out the door.

But not all post-employment behaviour amounts to infidelity.  In my Metro News article "Changing Jobs Require More than Giving Two Weeks' Notice" you can read the five legal points to remember, to keep you both in business and out of the courtroom

Daniel A. Lublin