Law360 will stop requiring new hires to sign noncompete agreements under a settlement between the legal publication and New York authorities, who fired a warning shot at companies that include such provisions in their employment contracts, The Wall Street Journal reported today. The settlement follows an investigation by the New York attorney general’s office into whether companies that require junior-level employees to sign such agreements are violating New York labor laws. The clauses, which bar departing employees from taking jobs with their company’s competitors for a designated period, have spread beyond the mostly senior or technical positions where they originated, attracting government scrutiny. Law360, a LexisNexis Group unit that publishes online newsletters covering court cases and other legal news, said it “voluntarily collaborated with the New York attorney general’s office and reached a mutual agreement regarding the best possible outcome” for its employees. Under the settlement, in which the New York-based publisher neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing, Law360 will no longer require editorial employees to sign noncompete deals, and will notify current and former employees who left within the past year that the one-year waiting period the deals impose are no longer in effect. The founder of Law360, Marius Meland, who sold the site to LexisNexis in 2012, said that he implemented noncompete agreements at the company, but that his policy was to not enforce them. He left the company in March 2015.
