This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 2nd,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. When employers ask employees to sign

non-compete agreements, what exactly is it they're requesting?

In what industries do these agreements make sense?

High finance, companies with trade secrets?

What about fast food, front line workers? Brian Albrecht is with the International Center for Law and Economics.

We discussed non-competes and why he believes that at least at this point.

We don't know enough to say that a proposed federal ban makes any sense.

Can you give me the best use case for an employee-employer relationship

where some no-compete provision or requirement makes sense.

Anytime the skill or the thing that is being taught to the employee is something that they can take with them.

That makes a lot of sense. For example, if a big thing that you're getting in your job is something like a client list and you're putting your employer is putting you in front of all of these different clients so you're a realtor or something.

Oh you meet all these people. That's basically what your job is,

is like creating a new company. And then that's going to be something that you could take with

you and to potentially compete. And so in order to get you to, you know,

commit to your current company

and to not kind of up and run with all of these valuable assets

that the company is giving you,

then you sign a non-compete to say no I'm not going to leave

and go to the next realtor I'm going to stick with you guys. Okay but we have seen and

what about financial services? The similar client list is a big one within financial services.

You know, the company is going to put you in front of all their clients.

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