How to find an employee-side covenant lawyer, what to bring, and how the cost separates a flat-fee review from a negotiation letter from an injunction defense.
The calls cluster in January and again in early fall, because that is when offers land: bonuses have paid out, the new fiscal year has opened requisitions, and someone who has been quietly interviewing since October now has a written start date and a signed agreement from four years ago that they have not read since orientation. The clock is the problem. A covenant question answered in the week before you resign costs one thing; the same question answered after your former employer's counsel has sent a letter to your new employer costs a great deal more, and the range between those two numbers is wide enough to be worth understanding before you dial anyone.
1. Check that the practice is employee-side and covenant-specific
Plenty of firms list employment law on the website and mean wage disputes, discrimination charges, or handbook drafting for small employers. What you want is narrower: someone who reads non-competes, non-solicitation clauses and confidentiality provisions against your state's case law every month, and who takes employees rather than companies. Ask directly what share of the practice is employee-side, ask whether the attorney has argued a preliminary injunction hearing in your county, and ask which state's courts they appear in most. A general business litigator will get there eventually, on your money. A careful reader checks the bio for reported cases, not for adjectives.
2. Understand what one paid hour can actually reach
An hour, properly used, buys a read of your agreement, an honest reaction to the choice-of-law and venue clauses, a view on whether the restriction as written looks enforceable where you live, and a plan for the next thirty days. It does not buy a written opinion letter, a call to your prospective employer, research into an unusual clause, or a guarantee. It does not buy certainty either, because enforceability turns on facts a stranger cannot know in sixty minutes: what you actually did, who you actually solicited, what you carried out the door. Treat the hour as triage.
3. Bring the whole paper trail, not the one page that worries you
Send the offer letter, the signed agreement and every amendment, the equity grant and its clawback language, any confidentiality or invention-assignment form from your first week, the employee handbook section on trade secrets, and the new offer you are considering. Add a plain description of your job: territory, accounts, whether you saw pricing, whether you built the customer list or inherited it. Note anything already done, resignation submitted, laptop returned, files copied. Attorneys price a review lower when the file arrives complete, because the second hour spent chasing exhibits is billed exactly like the first.
4. Know the three price tiers before you ask for a quote
The market separates cleanly. A flat-fee review of one agreement, with a call afterward, sits at the low end and is usually quoted as a fixed number rather than an hourly estimate. A negotiation letter, where counsel writes to your former employer proposing a narrowed restriction, a carve-out for a named account, or a release, costs a multiple of that, because it invites a reply that must be handled. Defending a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction is a different category entirely: expedited discovery, affidavits, a hearing inside two weeks, and a retainer sized for litigation rather than advice.
5. Ask how the engagement letter handles escalation
The question that saves money later is what happens when a flat-fee review turns into something else. Get it in writing: whether the flat fee credits against an hourly retainer, what the hourly rate is for the attorney and for any associate or paralegal, what the trust deposit is and when it must be replenished, and whether the firm charges for the short email that resolves a question. Federal interest in these clauses has grown, and the Federal Trade Commission has taken up the competitive effects of non-competes, so counsel who follow the area will tell you plainly where the law is still moving.
The sensible sequence, if your start date is six weeks out, is a paid review now, a decision about a letter within ten days of that, and a resignation timed so that nothing is disputed while you are still holding company property. Money spent in that order tends to stay small.