I printed the employment agreement this morning. The copy I found in the guest room closet last week, eleven pages, originally printed on an HP inkjet I got rid of in 2021. It’s on my computer. I highlighted the clause on the PDF two weeks ago. I printed it again anyway.
Something about a legal document in your hand on a Sunday morning that is different from the same document on a screen. The screen version I’ve been reading for two weeks. The paper version I made coffee first.
I’ve been building the question list for Tuesday since Thursday. It started in my phone, moved to a Word document, got a numbered heading and sub-points, which is how I know I’m taking something seriously. Eight questions. Some of them are administrative. Two are the ones that actually keep me up.
Questions one through five are about the language: what “Restricted Clients” means if the exhibit was never attached to my copy, whether the non-solicitation clause applies after termination or only during employment, what “direct or indirect solicitation” means in practice when someone is both a contact and a potential client. The kind of preparation you do when you’re paying someone $350 an hour.
Question six: how do I get the missing exhibit?
Question seven is the one I’ve rewritten four times. There are two names on my list where I genuinely don’t know where I stand legally. One is a VP of Operations at a company that has been my employer’s client for six years, someone I’ve worked alongside on renewals and probably know better than most of my internal colleagues do. The other is a woman I had dinner with in Denver in 2022, where we ended up talking about her team’s renewal problems for an hour over salmon and a bottle of white wine that neither of us needed. I want to know whether those relationships fall inside the clause or outside it.
What I actually want is for the attorney to say: those are fine, call them. That’s the honest version of question seven. The formal version is “are these specific contacts restricted under the non-solicitation clause.” The honest version is “please tell me I can do the next thing, and also that it’s not my fault if I do it and something goes wrong.”
The attorney can give me legal clearance. Legal clearance is not the same thing as permission. I know that. I’m writing it down because I need to know it a little more firmly than I currently do.
I checked my inbox before I started writing this. Nothing from the December emailer yet. About twenty hours since I sent it. She is a person with a full weekend. I’m not worried. I also apparently check my email before I can think clearly about anything else in the morning, which is a pattern I have identified and have not changed.
The printed agreement is on my desk. Post-it on page three for the exhibit question. The case studies I wrote in May are in a folder I made specifically for this meeting, which the attorney hasn’t asked for and probably won’t look at, but which I made anyway because that’s what I do when something matters. I’m not sure if that’s thorough or just the part of me that is more comfortable having the folder than making the call.
Tuesday at 1pm I will sit in front of my laptop and talk to someone who can tell me exactly what my employment agreement allows. That is not nothing. I have been waiting for that conversation since I found the box in the guest room. After it, there will not be a next thing I need to do first. Wednesday morning, the next step is the phone calls themselves.
I have eight questions ready. I’m working on the ninth.