Signing an employment contract or severance agreement without a lawyer’s review can cost you leverage you didn’t know you had. A single clause about non-compete restrictions, bonus eligibility, or confidentiality can shape your career options for years after you sign. This is especially true for people working in New York City’s creative and agency world, where contracts often include intellectual property assignments, client non-solicitation terms, and freelance-to-employee conversion clauses that general templates don’t address well.
Our firm works with employees and small businesses across New York City to review, negotiate, and draft employment agreements before problems start. We also step in when a contract dispute, termination, or severance offer lands on your desk with a deadline attached. You can learn more about our broader practice on our New York employment lawyer page.
Below, we walk through the services we offer, the issues we see most often, and what to expect when you bring our experienced employment contract lawyers a contract, non-compete, or severance agreement to review.
Employment Law Services in New York City
We read employment contracts line by line and explain what each clause actually means for your day-to-day work and your future options. Many people focus only on salary and start date, but provisions on termination clauses, arbitration, and post-employment restrictions often matter more over time. Our goal is to make sure you understand what you’re agreeing to before you put your signature on the page.
Negotiating Key Terms in Your Best Interests
Once we’ve identified the terms that could work against you, we help you push back on specific language rather than the whole document. This might mean narrowing a non-solicit clause, adding a severance guarantee, or clarifying how bonuses and commissions are calculated. New York employers often expect some negotiation, and a clear, well-reasoned counterproposal tends to get a better response than silence or an outright refusal to sign.
Advising Creative Agency Professionals
Agency employees and freelancers face contract issues that don’t always come up in other industries, including ownership of creative work, client relationships built on personal reputation, and overlapping roles across multiple projects. We help people in these positions understand how intellectual property assignment clauses and client non-solicitation terms interact with their ability to build a portfolio or move to a new agency. This kind of contract review matters most before you accept a position, not after a dispute has already started.
Common Employment Issues Our Legal Counsel Handles
New York has specific rules about overtime pay, meal breaks, and timely wage payment that don’t always match what’s written into an employment contract. We help clients figure out whether they’ve been misclassified as exempt from overtime or as an independent contractor when the actual working relationship looks more like employment. These disputes often turn on the details of job duties and pay structure, so we look closely at how the work was actually performed.
Discrimination and Harassment Claims
Employment contracts sometimes include arbitration clauses or internal complaint procedures that affect how a discrimination or harassment claim moves forward. We review these provisions with clients to explain what options remain available and what steps typically need to happen first. Understanding your contract terms early can affect the strength and timing of any claim you decide to pursue.
Wrongful Termination Concerns
New York is generally an at-will employment state, but contracts can create exceptions through specific termination language, employee handbooks, or promises made during hiring. We review the circumstances of a termination alongside the contract language to determine whether the employer followed its own terms. This analysis often shapes whether severance negotiations or a formal claim make more sense.
Agreements Our Employment Lawyers Draft
We draft and review offer letters and full employment agreements for both individuals and small employers, covering compensation, benefits, and job responsibilities in clear language. A well-drafted agreement reduces the chance of disputes later by spelling out expectations on both sides from day one. For agency clients, this often includes addressing project-based bonuses or commission structures tied to client work.
Independent Contractor Agreements
Many creative professionals move between employee and freelance status throughout their careers, and the agreement governing that relationship needs to match how the work is actually structured. We draft contractor agreements that address payment terms, scope of work, and ownership of deliverables so both sides know what to expect. Getting this classification right also matters for tax treatment and eligibility for benefits.
Confidentiality and IP Assignment Agreements
Agencies and their clients rely heavily on confidentiality agreements and intellectual property assignment clauses to protect creative work and client information. We draft these provisions to be specific about what’s covered, rather than relying on broad language that can be hard to enforce or unfair to sign. This is particularly relevant for designers, writers, and strategists whose portfolio work may straddle multiple employers over time.
Non-Compete & Non-Solicit Review
New York courts currently evaluate non-compete agreements under a reasonableness standard, looking at factors like duration, geographic scope, and whether the restriction protects a legitimate business interest. There’s no blanket ban on non-competes in New York today, but courts have shown they’re willing to strike down or narrow provisions that go further than necessary to protect an employer’s interests. Because this analysis is fact-specific, two very similar clauses can be treated differently depending on the industry and the employee’s role.
Pending Changes to New York Non-Compete Law
State lawmakers have been actively considering legislation that would limit or ban non-compete agreements for most employees below a high compensation threshold, following a similar bill that Governor Hochul vetoed in 2023. As of now, this legislation has not been signed into law, so the current common law reasonableness standard still applies to agreements being signed today. We track these developments closely and factor them into our advice, since a contract signed now could be affected by how the law develops.
What We Look for in Your Agreement
When we review a non-compete or non-solicit clause, we look at the specific restrictions on time, geography, and the type of work or clients covered. We also consider how the clause fits with your role, since a broad restriction on an entry-level employee is treated differently than one on a senior executive with access to sensitive client relationships. Our review aims to identify whether the clause is enforceable as written and what changes might make it more reasonable before you sign.
Severance Agreement Review
A typical severance agreement addresses the amount and timing of severance pay, continuation of benefits, and a release of legal claims against the employer. These agreements often include confidentiality, non-disparagement, and sometimes renewed non-compete or non-solicit language, so it’s worth reading the full document rather than focusing only on the payment amount. We walk clients through each section so they understand exactly what they’re giving up in exchange for the severance offered.
Age Discrimination Waivers Under Federal Law
If you’re 40 or older and your severance agreement asks you to waive age discrimination claims, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act requires specific protections before that waiver is valid. These typically include a set period to consider the agreement, the right to revoke your signature after signing, and clear written language identifying the rights being waived. We check severance agreements against these requirements to help clients understand whether a waiver is likely to hold up.
Negotiating Better Severance Terms
Severance offers are often presented as final, but there’s frequently room to negotiate additional pay, extended benefits, or changes to restrictive covenants included in the agreement. We help clients identify which terms are worth pushing back on based on their individual circumstances and the strength of any underlying claims. A short delay to have the agreement reviewed rarely costs you the offer, but signing too quickly can cost you options you didn’t know you had.
Contact Our Law Firm to Discuss Legal Representation for Your Employment Contract Negotiations
If you’re facing a new job offer, a non-compete clause, or a severance agreement in New York City, it helps to have someone review the document before you sign anything. Our firm works with employees and agencies throughout New York City to make sense of contract language and negotiate terms that reflect your actual situation. Reach out to discuss your employment agreement and find out what your options look like.
