When highly-placed employees leave their firm to start a new venture or join a competitor, questions of misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition frequently arise. These questions can quickly evolve into time-consuming and expensive litigation in which the prior firm may seek injunctive relief to prevent the former employees from soliciting the customers they serviced at the prior firm, or to compel the return of trade secret documents and information, or even to prevent the former employees from competing at all with their prior firm. In the financial services industry, where customer privacy issues and the “Protocol for Broker Recruiting” may come into play, these disputes take on an added layer of complexity; in all instances, it is essential that parties be represented by counsel having expertise in this area. Jones Bell has been counseling clients and successfully litigating these disputes in this area for nearly 40 years, and also has been at the forefront of “transition counseling,” which aims either to avoid litigation altogether, or to enhance the chances of a successful outcome in the event litigation becomes inevitable.
