eSignature Lawfulness for Contract of Employment in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Contract of employment in United Kingdom

hi there welcome back to our Channel today I have an actual client here no idea um my name is Alex Monaco the solicitor I'm going to give Nadia a free consultation we're going to film it and we're putting it on YouTube [Music] now Nadia you've got a a query do you want to just explain what what that is um hi um basically I've been uh approach um I mean I'm working in the cheesy industry for over five years here in London and I work for one of the biggest cheese Distributors and I've been approached by one of our beautiful producer to go and and work for a program kind of representing their brands and um promote so continue my job physically and I was so excited to move to this job position but my kind of part is I've been I've been threatening uh go on legal matters that I cannot basically work for the next six months in the UK because I have a post-employment restriction which is saying that yeah for the next six months I cannot work in any um other competitor or producer or supplier in my industry and I came to ask for your help because I'm quite concerned and anxious about it because this is what I've been doing and this well I mean I I don't know how to handle the situation because I really want to to move to Disney opportunity to this job but at the same time I feel concerned that my current employer could take me to court and I mean I'm from Spain so probably I'm all that knowledgeable on the all the UK legislation so that's why I was seeking for some professional help sure to kind of reassure to see what I can do or not because it seems very uh to to widen to limited that someone as an employer could just say no you cannot work yeah the next six months yeah yeah okay so in your contract of employment that you had in that you've got in your current employer that you're trying to leave there's a clause in there say you can't work for a competitor yeah exactly and how how is your employer been threatening regarding legal action have they said anything specific about this or are they written to you or well when I left the job and they tried to um make me sign again another paper uh which I for the moment I didn't sign up saying that like as a reminder you kind of go and work for any competitor it's a kind of a re-uh sort of let me write again all these conditions and then obviously yeah verbally as well and from all side of from director line manager CEO of the company so yeah yeah it's been quite difficult yeah okay yeah that is obviously quite a scary time so no you've come to the right place so we'll we'll do our best to advise you um one more thing that I should say is that and again this is potentially more relevant to people watching at home but if you're now in a situation where you are very senior and you have got lots of zeros on your pay packet and a long notice period and you've become a director or partner or so on um and you've and you've you're now leaving your job so when you look at your clause and your contract now you think actually this this might be enforceable this might be relevant to me but when you signed it when you started at the company five years ago 10 years ago however many years ago at that time you were only you know a normal employee or someone more Junior with a shorter notice period less zeros on the payback and not a director the the legal test is was the Clause enforceable at the time you signed it so the question is not is it enforceable now at the time when the company seeks to enforce it but the question is was it legally Fair valid and impossible then back then at the time that you actually signed it so um worth bearing in mind as well now if you're watching this and you don't know what restrictive covenants are then their Clauses in your contract employment which stop you from doing things after you've left your job the classic ones are sorry not I've just got to explain this for the viewers okay so the classic ones are non-proaching of clients clauses and there's non-solicitation of fellow employees so not getting your colleagues to work with you in your new company and there are some that actually try and stop you from competing at all or going to work with a competitor now Nadia what I'm understanding from your contract is that the one that you're um concerned about today is this Clause that stops you from going to work for a competitor yes exactly okay so that's pretty scary stuff because you're gonna be out of a job basically you'd have to be unemployed so pretty much right so in in your in your contract it says that you've for six months after you you finish your job you can't work for any competitor to the company right correct okay now you'll notice period is only one month right so that would mean even after a notice period finished well you're gonna be out of work for another five or six months after that right yes correct so I'm guessing you're not going to be able to survive for no work and no pay of six months yeah it's just my way I may not believe in how I'm earning my money right exactly yeah you know what's running around in private jets you know in just six months in the Caribbean Okay so all right and understand as well from your contract here that you've also got um a clause stopping you from dealing with the clients of the of the company and you've got another clause which stops you from poaching the employees as well so okay now what I've done is I've spoken to a number of my lawyers here at Monaco solicitors and you know got a few um a few perspectives done a bit of research on the case law now we think that this Clause is not enforceable okay so we think it's not legally valid uh it's too wide in its uh construction so to use a technical term so this kind of clause it's got to be it's got to be drafted really narrowly okay so there's got to be quite tight the language has got to be super tight it can't just be generally saying you can't work for a competitor because it's in Restraint of trade so we're in a sort of a free market economy and there are laws to um stop anti-competition anti-competitive Behavior now you're in the cheese industry here right so you're selling cheese right so people have been selling cheese for thousands of years so companies can't just come along and stop people from selling Gins right now it's okay for them to want to stop you from selling cheese to their clients so the Clause that stops you from selling to their clients for six months after that's okay when I say it's okay I mean it's legally enforceable so I mean it's it's valid all right and the one about you not purchased off that's valid too but to say you can't um work for any competitor is is far too wide and it's far too broad to be enforceable now but if you're watching this at home and you're wondering well what is enforceable okay this kind of thing that would be valid and I guess this is good example for you as well for example if they were to list out all the competitors in a list and just say okay these two or three companies you can't work for them then they're starting to get more along those lines it's starting to be more specific right maybe they list out why you can't work for these other companies specifically and they should also say exactly what you can't do for them as well rather than just in in this clause in your contract it just says you can't do anything that you currently do um for your uh in your current job it just gives that kind of total um total reps I'll just say that but again so in this contract um in this Clause it just says that you can't do anything that you currently do whereas what it needs to say to be enforceable is specifically list all the things that you currently do that you're not allowed to do and there are a couple of other points I mean if and I know you're not a director right but again this is another example if you were a director you have super high level employee super senior you're on some big money you know you're getting paid six figures for example um then you can you start to see these Clauses coming in because you might have been hired specifically you know on a sort of a top secret mission you know and and the part of your the reason why they're paying you so much is so you don't take these Insider secrets to a competitor you know they're they're probably giving you us three months or six months notice period in your contract so in those scenarios where you are like high level paid a hell of a lot but lots of notice period in your contract then yeah then companies can start to play around with these Clauses and start to put them in contracts no all right so I mean what I've just outlined to you is the legal position on paper you've got to appreciate there's another aspect to this which is what happens in practice because some companies don't understand the law right so they might not realize this and they might not realize their contract is wrong and they might still try and come after you if it's possible Right now when that happens what what that is known as is an injunction that to get an injunction the company would have to go to the high court in London right and it's an urgent thing that they could book a hearing within a couple of days or you know three days they could get a hearing because it's not like a normal court case that you take one or two years or something to to get to the end of so you'd have an injunction hearing very quickly as soon as the company finds out and then you have a court case after like in a year's time but in that whole time you know if there is an injunction on you you wouldn't be allowed to do this work right well for the six month tip now it's very unlikely they're going to do that so don't worry okay firstly it's probably going to cost them about 10 or 20 000 pounds to even do that and secondly they would lose in that scenario what I should say is if that does happen because there are some companies even though it's quite a big company some companies are just a bit crazy to be honest if that does happen you have to get a lawyer you have to get a lawyer you can't you can't you can't deal with injunctions on your own okay that you the the the very high likelihood in this case you'd get your legal fees paid um when you when you won that injunction hearing but up front you'd have to put down you know and it's often you'd have to put down some thousands so I don't want to say that's impossible because you never know and you can't stop anyone suing someone else you can't stop a crazy person suing someone right it's just not possible you'd have to you know lock them up and take away their phone and their pens and their checkbooks it's possible right so just make sure if anyone you know gives you a piece of paper or you get a letter saying injunction on the top high court anything like that or even if it's just a threat from a lawyer normally they'd have to send the lawyer's letter first to threaten it before they would go to court take that letter straight to a lawyer okay um similarly you know maybe you're you're not ending your employment maybe you're starting a new job right and you're watching this you're starting a job and you're wondering should you sign up to one of these types of contracts with this type of clause in there now if that's you and you're actually starting this this new job you've got two options now either option one you sign up and you just know because you've watched this or you've spoken to us or you've done your research you just know that it's not enforceable so you just keep your mouth shut sign the contract and then if it ever did come to it at the end of the contract when you do leave um you know that it's not enforceable so you know you're going to win that or you're not not to worry on the other hand a lot of people might prefer just to actually go with the kind of Open Hands to the company and say hello this is not impossible I'm not signing this this is far too wide um you need to change this the the only danger of someone was to do that is that the company might change it to make it enforceable make it more specific so you're giving them a chance to kind of Rectify their mistakes um the only other thing I should say to you just to give you one more bit of confidence and reassurance is that because they have this other clause in there which stops you from dealing with their clients right after you've left which is a separate Clause not about joining a competitor working for competitor it's about dealing with their actual clients because they've got that that Clause protects their legitimate business interests so if a judge is looking at this whole thing saying well what's your business interests here well they might say well we would like to stop no idea from uh you know dealing with our with our clients so there's well you've got a clause already for that you don't need this other clause which stops stops her from working for anyone you've got a specific Clause specifically dealing with a specific clients so because of because of that this other Clause is completely redundant it's it has no independent kind of meaning or or it's not it's not necessary um so I don't know if that answers um you know the questions you had or if you've got anything else yeah I think thank you Alex I was pretty much exhausted and I feel already assured enough with us obviously yeah it was kind of scary the idea of not being able to work for the next six months I mean we yeah I'll have to pay rent and things so you know really really uh thank you so much for your for your help on yeah pleasure us case thanks for coming in nice one so if you're wondering uh any specific questions about your case maybe you've got restrictive comments in your contract of employment you can leave a comment below this video on the YouTube channel and we'll try and answer you there obviously you can get in touch with us through our website and details again in the description below either way give us a like and make sure you subscribe to our channel here to stay tuned for the next video the next free consultation video in this series thanks very much [Music] foreign