Is getting a lawyer to look over your job offer a good idea? Certainly as the job offer gets longer and more detailed, getting an experienced employment lawyer can be a good idea so that you’re not signing anything you might regret.

Unless you’re a lawyer yourself, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out some of the wording of work contracts especially when they include a no-compete clause and other legalese that you might not be sure about.

I’ve seen job offers that consist of 2 pages and I’ve also helped people work through and accept job offers that are often 10 pages or more when you add in the various attachments and inclusions.

In that regard, getting an employment lawyer to look over your job offer before signing it can be a good idea to ensure that you properly understand everything you’re signing, get the things you don’t quite understand clarified and are made aware of certain things that you might want to ask your future employer about before autographing it and sending it back to them.

It’s often hard to sign a job offer and think about all the possible outcomes that might not occur until you’ve left that job! You’re just about to join the company, and aren’t worried about what happens when you leave!

To give you an idea why this isn’t a good strategy, I’m reminded of a situation with a guy I knew when I was helping him look for a new job. He held a good job in a management position and left the company to join another firm that could reasonably be considered a competitor. His former employer found out that he’d joined a competitor and threatened to take him to court for violating his work contract with them which specified that he wasn’t allowed to work for a competitor for a period of time.

He ended up quitting the job a few months after he’d started, to avoid the lawsuit and the grief that it was going to also give his new employer who clearly weren’t at fault in any way. That’s why he had started working with me…to find a new job to replace the one he’d just been forced to quit.