Abstract
I. Introduction The profession is experiencing a dramatic decrease in loyalty, both of law firm employers to lawyers and of associates and partners to the law firms. This decline in reciprocal loyalties has led to increasing lawyer mobility. Both sides, the departing lawyer and the law firm, have critical commercial interests at stake, and both sides are strongly motivated to protect them. Departing lawyers hope that their clients depart with them to provide the basis for a new practice, and the firms seek to retain clients with the firm. On one side, departing lawyers are exploring how far they can go to solicit clients before and after separation from the firm. On the other side, to prevent or inhibit departing lawyers from taking clients from the firm, many firms are experimenting with how far they can go to discourage competition for clients by departing lawyers. The objective is to let a firm's lawyers know that there will be immediate and serious negative consequences if a lawyer leaves and goes into competition with the firm. There is some evidence that many lawyers may not know about the Rules of Professional Conduct 1 that apply to agreements that restrict the practice of departing lawyers, 2 but in any event, the firms have very strong commercial incentives to push the outer edge of the envelope on these issues. This article focuses on how far firms can go to discourage competition for clients by departing lawyers. Given scarce prosecutorial resources, it appears ...