Can you take clients when you leave a job?

Ronald Reagan made it OK for people and employers to no longer have the relationship they had in which loyalty mattered. Newt Gingrich said publicly that an employee should be able to make the best agreement he could with an employee. Many states are Right To Work States. There is a Federal law that bars restraint of trade. Wouldn’t the laws keeping an employee from taking clients with him or her run afoul of federal law and the Conservative Republican programs? If an employer tries to block an employee from taking clients couldn’t that be unconstitutional in that it interferes with interstate commerce?

I was asked to sign a non-compete agreement or I would be let go. I did not and they (found) another reason to let me go.

Nobody owns those clients except the clients themselves. I would expect they are free to do business with whomever they pleased.

How they find out where you are now at is up to you and them.

I would not feel an ounce of guilt, especially after being laid off.

Companies want loyalty but are unwilling and unable to provide it themselves.

All that matters is the employee intention, if 80% of the company former employee income is provided by clients that leave the company in less that a year it’s clear that the ex-employee is living from stolen clients, that it’s unfair for the company. It’s also unfair not letting ex-employees start their own business on the field they know best, but they have to start to build something, not from someone else foundation. Regards.

In my opinion. all the clients that I have cultivated in my sales career belong to my respective employers. I was not an independent business owner, I was an employee paid well to generate business for each company I have een employed by.

I think she should be free to do whatever she wishes. Her customers can call her old job, ask to speak to a VP, Director, whatever and demand to know why she was let go, and question that judgment. Then they tell that firm that if they’re not willing to take them back on to manage their portfolios that they’ll take their business elsewhere and sever the contract.

Then they’re free to do whatever they want. If they choose to start their own brokerage firm and hire her on as the chief executive there’s not a damn thing they should be able to do about it.

I can not imagine that brokerage firms have ETF clauses!

If I were placed on a garden leave any client who approaches me would be well aware of that garden leave, and it isn’t fair to turn away business. I would up hold the law, agree or disagree, and not solicite any clinets, but again good business should not be turned away…..especially in these times.

I think the act is ridiculous. People do business with people, not the company’s name. If they like your work and want to move where YOU are going, that should not matter. In a tough economy like today, this should be the least of our worries. So the big companies loose a couple grand, big deal, it’s the small-to medium sized businesses that run the economy so why penalize the small guy.

Just Wondering, you need to make a living, so form an LLC, to protect personal assets. It can be done for a Delaware LLC for about $25 in less than an hour.

Make sure you don’t have any client lists. Maybe, buy a new PC; they’re cheap.

Set up a website (Yahoo! Small Biz) or run a visible ad.

Document that all clients approached you. Save all email and phone records.

Resist the temptation to ‘announce’ your clients. You may even ask them to sign a non-disclosure agreement, keeping their relationship with you confidential. If your ex-employer does not know about your new clients, then you have no exposure.

If the ex-employer files a complaint anyway, don’t hire a lawyer; they’re too expensive. See what your state Department of Labor can do. I’ve found them to be extremely helpful. The ex-employer’s lawyer will bleed them dry, not you, and they will quickly lose interest in litigation. Very few cases ever go to trial.

I’ve enforced successfully against three larger companies for not paying me, and I won all three. Now, I’m retired. Companies do lots of bad things to employees; judges know this.

Greco seems to be a corporate lawyer. It would be interesting to see what he or an employee lawyer thinks would be the correct way for Just Wondering to move on.

Good luck growing your business.

I think if a client or clients are willing to go wherever you go should send a message to the company they’re doing business with that they’re not overall satisfied.
Many times a customer will maintain a business relationship with a firm simply because the actual person they’re doing business with is the thread that’s keeping them there.
I certainly believe it is an unfair on the employee departing. This is how competition is created! Companies can get comfortable and complacent because they’re not paying enough attention to their clientele. Maybe as a company if it did more of the “right things” with their clientele and employees people wouldn’t leave. Sometimes the reverse occurs where the client will hire the person they’re doing business with. Here the company loses a great person and the possibility for the client with their new hire to do business elsewhere.

Noncompete agreements are bad for innovation and competition…the foundation of America’s capitalist system. Courts need to stop enforcing these restrictive employee agreements. We blog on the issues regularly at: http://virginianoncompete.blogspot.com/

Over the years, I’ve had to deal with non-compete clauses for myself and provided advice for my friends when they’ve been required to sign. However well written, even non-competes are difficult to word and interpret.

Additionally, aspects of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act are probably open to interpretation.

First…what defines a client or a client list…the company, the corporate division, or the individual acting on behalf of the client? If your old company has done business with Joe of the XYZ Corporation, is the client Joe or the company. Technically, I would say the company. If Joe decides to leave XYZ, can you contact him as a potential new client of your new company? I would say yes…but, some companies would say no. I don’t believe that a barring of contact with an individual could be forever…but what is that time stipulation?

What constitutes “valuable information that is not known to the public…”? If a client list is made up of names of individuals, job titles, functions and contact information…does that constitute a “trade secret?” However, let’s assume that Bob is on a company’s client list, but Bob goes “public” in the local business journal about his title, his job function, and the article provides his company’s phone number and website address (which includes a company directory of names and email links), is that still considered “information nor known to the public?” Most client lists are simply that…names and address of individuals that may or may not be doing active business with your former employer.

At one time, I shared office space with another advertising firm across the hall. Unbeknownst to me, the other guy purchased the local Chamber of Commerce list and did a mass mailing. One day, a company on that list contacted my firm, wanting to do business. The other guy made a point of telling me that anyone on his purchased list of 400+ names was “his client” despite the fact that he did not personally generate the list, nor had any of the names actually become customers. My retort was that I had in my possession the local phone book, which contained all the company names as well…so in that regard, based on his analysis, anyone in the phonebook could be construed as a client.

Lastly…can anyone restrict fair trade when the client comes to you….which has happened to me in the past. Can a former employer limit a potential client’s contact with me…I seriously doubt it. I know of a few clients who have continued to do business with the former employee’s company as well as the new company, with the stipulation to the former employer that any effort to legally limit their access to the former employee will result in the loss of business to the former employer as well. Lesson…spread the work around for a short while to both organizations, then cut the ties to the former if possible.

My rule of thumb has been simple…if someone wanted to do business with me and leave my former employer, they must first contact me, and be willing to help defend me to my former employer and possibly in court. They’ve always agreed, but I’ve never had to defend myself in this situation.

I don’t advocate stealing clients…never have, never will. However, when a client is willing to follow a former employee to their new position, the relationship must have been based on trust and a common bond…something that the former employer may not be able to provide no matter who they get to retain the client.

It sounds like Just Wondering is in a lose-lose situation. Even if the clients approached Wondering, s/he could still be sued. And in these days, courts have increasingly been siding with the corporation (in this case, established corporation) and the ruling that client lists are proprietary property is proof. Even if used in boasts they’re proprietary?
Perhaps if Wondering can work through the non-official contact, s/he can work around some of it. I also guess it depends on how many clients we’re talking about and what percentage of the former employer’s business they represent whether they’ll come after just wondering.
However, the reference in the comment to “stealing” clients is way off base. If approached, the only reason the company is keeping them is because of Just Wondering. The Exec. Ste bemoans the lack of employee loyalty, but they make it impossible — especially with gardening clauses and the like. Employees are a cost which is the first thing to be cut to guarantee the executive bonuses; staying with a company too long makes you a liability because they’ll soon be looking to replace you with someone cheaper. “Loyalty” has too many negatives attached to it and those were all put there by the Exec. Ste. They shouldn’t cry when they reap what they sow.

A company invests a lot of resources into gaining clientele, and thus there should be a reasonable expectation against client poaching.

Conversely, it is unreasonable for a company to bind an employee through gardening clauses. Its the free market. Realistically, I don’t see how 3 months of imposed “no contact” can protect a company anyway.

Its an interesting issue, and an issue I might be facing soon enough. I am in a similar situation, only in teh IT field. I work as a software consultant at a client site and about to leave in couple weeks for a more permanent job. There will be some left over job that the client requires I do for them, even after I leave my employer. Work about 10 hrs a week, on weekends as an independent entity, directly with the client. I do not know if I can do that. In this case, though, the client has been brouught on by me, so my employer really, doesn’t even know anyone at the client or the work I do. He is only linked because I am employed by him.

All you need is documented proof that those clients were dealing with the firm because of you. By letting you go, they conciously decided to relinquish those accounts. Don’t solicit, just let them know where you are. There are many ways to prove things in your favor

See Illinois case from 1989 (approx.) Stellato v. Jacobs, Williams, and Montgomery.

As a sales person, any and every “relationship” that I cultivate is mine. I can understand maybe be excluded from reaching out to a client if an agreement were signed to that affect, but if that client has my new contact details and calls me, that’s their choice. I thought this was a FREE County?

Clients dictate where they go. Most of the time the rather stay with their account manager. I would not directly persue company clients when leaving. I rather think there is plenty of business and would make a concious effort to build my own clientele. But, if a client wants to be with me……. They’re mine.

The investment that an employer makes through employees is risky enough without employees stealing the fruits of that investment when they leave.