Skill v1.0.1

version: "1.0.1" name: employment-review description: The issue-spotting checklist for employment documents — the areas where employment agreements go wrong and the patterns that mark a clause as defective or jurisdiction-sensitive. Use when drafting or reviewing any employment document — an employment agreement, offer letter, severance or separation agreement, or confidentiality/invention-assignment agreement. States WHERE to look, never what the law says: retrieve the governing law itself per the legal-research skill.

Check every employment document against all six areas below. For each area: state what the document says, cite the clause as [<Document> § <section>] (or note its absence — a missing term is a finding), and where the area is marked jurisdiction-sensitive, retrieve the governing jurisdiction's current law (load the legal-research skill) before concluding anything — employment law varies sharply by state and country, and a clause that is market-standard in one place is void in another. This checklist tells you where to look; it never tells you what the law is.

<checklist>

1. Restrictive covenants

Inspect: non-competes, customer and employee non-solicits, garden-leave or extended-notice provisions that restrict competitive work during or after employment, exclusivity.

What bad looks like:

• Any post-employment non-compete or non-solicit drafted without verifying the

governing jurisdiction's enforceability rules — several jurisdictions void them outright; retrieve the statute before keeping or striking.

• A notice or garden-leave period whose practical effect is a non-compete,

evaluated as if it were merely a notice term.

• Restraints justified as confidentiality protection that reach beyond trade

secrets.

2. Intellectual property and invention assignment

Inspect: scope of assignment, prior-invention disclosure and exclusions, statutory carve-outs and notices.

What bad looks like:

• Assignment reaching inventions made on the employee's own time, without

employer resources, and unrelated to the business — many jurisdictions cap assignability by statute and some REQUIRE the agreement to carry a written notice of the carve-out; retrieve the governing state's invention-assignment statute and check both the carve-out and the notice.

• A prior-invention disclosure obligation so broad it forces disclosure of

third-party confidential material.

3. Dispute resolution

Inspect: arbitration body, venue, cost allocation, scope, jury and class waivers.

What bad looks like:

• An arbitral body that does not exist or is not a recognized institution

(AAA, JAMS, or equivalent) — verify the named body is real.

• Venue or governing law outside the employee's work state, or costs loaded

onto the employee — several jurisdictions restrict both for employees; retrieve the governing rules before passing the clause.

• Mandatory arbitration drafted without the procedural-fairness elements the

governing jurisdiction's courts require for employment claims.

4. Compensation and forfeiture

Inspect: salary, bonus terms (target AND maximum, and whether earned bonus is conditioned on employment at payment), commissions, equity grants, vacation, clawbacks, deductions, final-pay mechanics.

What bad looks like:

• Forfeiture of earned compensation (accrued bonus, commission, or vacation) on

resignation or termination — wage statutes in many jurisdictions prohibit forfeiting earned amounts; retrieve them.

• Each equity grant's vesting transcribed generically: every grant's cliff,

frequency, and period must match the controlling document exactly, and the governing equity plan must be named consistently everywhere it appears.

• A signing bonus or relocation payment with no stated repayment terms either

way — flag the gap.

5. Term, termination, and severance

Inspect: at-will status, notice obligations, severance triggers and amounts, definitions behind each trigger, exempt/non-exempt classification.

What bad looks like:

• Severance conditioned on terms the agreement never defines ("Cause," "Good

Reason," "Change in Control") or defines inconsistently with the plan documents it references.

• Notice obligations that sit uneasily with stated at-will employment, or that

carry forfeiture penalties (see area 4).

• No statement of overtime classification where the role plainly warrants one.

6. Choice of law and forum

Inspect: governing law, forum, and any term that moves an employee's claims away from where they work.

What bad looks like:

• Another state's law or forum imposed on an employee — some jurisdictions let

employees void such terms and recover fees; retrieve the governing statute before passing the clause.

• A governing-law clause that conflicts with mandatory local employee

protections.

</checklist>

These are the places employment documents fail, not statements of any jurisdiction's law. Every jurisdiction-sensitive conclusion must rest on retrieved current law (legal-research skill) or the matter's jurisdiction pack, never on this checklist alone.

<jurisdiction-risk> Employment law is the worst case for jurisdiction error — a clause that is market-standard in one place is void in another, the rules are state/national and frequently amended, and confidence is no guide to correctness. Calibrate by structural signal, not certainty.

• Name the assumed governing law first. Before judging any

jurisdiction-sensitive area above (restrictive covenants, invention assignment, dispute resolution, wage forfeiture, choice of law/forum), state the employee's work jurisdiction and the document's governing law, and where each comes from. If the question implies a jurisdiction without naming one, do not assume it — surface the gap and state what you assumed.

• Grade confidence down — qualify, then escalate — when the governing law is

state/local, non-US, lower-court-driven or unsettled, multi-jurisdiction, or recently changed. Restrictive-covenant and wage-forfeiture rules in particular shift by state and over time; confirm the rule is current.

• Governing law vs work location. Employee-protection statutes of the work

jurisdiction are frequently mandatory and override a contrary chosen law or forum; flag a governing-law or forum clause that points away from where the employee works, and treat the work jurisdiction's mandatory protections as a potential override (see area 6).

• Multi-jurisdiction workforce. When employees sit in more than one

jurisdiction, run all six areas separately and completely for each work jurisdiction — do not let a conclusion for one carry over — then reconcile: note where the jurisdictions agree, where a clause is enforceable in one but void in another, and route divergences that need a decision to escalation. </jurisdiction-risk>