“Response beginning to form to Biden ‘competition’ order”

Partner Peter Lando spoke to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about the Biden Administration’s Executive Order on “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.”

At a minimum, there may be some “low-hanging fruit” — such as a prohibition on an employee finding out that he will be required to sign a noncompete agreement on his first day of work — that Congress can pick off with bipartisan support, Beck said.

A lot of the work to rein in the use of noncompetes has already been going on at the state level, and it may be best not to tinker with that approach, he suggested.

Boston attorney Peter C. Lando agrees.

“This seems to me to be best left to the states,” he said.

…

This is yet another area where there may be noble intentions behind the action being directed, but there are risks of going too far, Lando said.

While the executive order repeatedly refers to companies as “powerful,” there are also many smaller companies out in the world, and many of those smaller companies actually want to be acquired, he said.

“It’s part of their wind-down plan,” Lando said.

This article was published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and New England In-House.