It’s the clause people sign in the relief of getting the deal done: buried among the boilerplate, a restraint on your future work that never existed in your contract of employment — a non-compete born at the exit, a non-solicitation wider than anything you agreed while employed. The rule for these is simple: new restraints are consideration, not wallpaper.
The Check: Exit Document Against Original Contract
The five-minute audit every recipient should run: place the exit agreement’s covenant clause beside your contract’s. Restated covenants — the contract’s existing restraints repeated for clarity — are ordinary drafting (though their scope still merits review). New or widened covenants — longer duration, broader territory, non-competes where only non-solicits existed, restraints appearing from nothing — are a different animal: the employer is asking you to surrender future earning capacity as part of leaving, and that surrender has a price. The legitimate responses, in order of preference: struck (the cleanest ask — “the covenants revert to the contract’s terms”), narrowed (duration and scope cut to what any legitimate interest could justify), or priced (kept, visibly paid for in the package). What they are never: something to swallow because the rest of the deal is agreed.
The Enforceability Reality — Both Directions
The honest law: restraint-of-trade doctrine voids covenants wider than a legitimate business interest requires — customer connections, genuinely confidential information, workforce stability, never mere freedom from competition — and no wider than necessary in duration, geography and scope; blanket non-competes fare worst, tailored non-solicits best. Which cuts both ways for you: the frightening clause may be weaker than it reads — but “probably unenforceable” is a poor life plan, because covenants are enforced by injunction and even losing fights are expensive to have; the professional move is resolving the clause’s reach now, in the negotiation where you hold leverage, rather than litigating it later from a new job. The firm’s injunction practice sees these fights from both chairs weekly — the strongest argument for settling the words before signing them. The full clause-audit lives on the anatomy page.
The one-line rule: anything restraining your future work that wasn’t in your contract is a term being purchased from you — and unpurchased terms get struck or narrowed. Every review here runs the contract-against-exit comparison as standard.
A covenant that wasn’t there before? Priced, narrowed, or struck — within 48 hours: 01 5827148.