Tip 1: Choose your choice of law wisely and FIRST.
- The law you choose to apply to a restrictive covenant is regularly outcome determinative in enforcement proceedings (e.g. Illinois’ rule on at-will employment as consideration, North Carolina’s rule on blue-penciling, Louisiana’s law on geographic scope, Florida’s statute on presumptive validity, etc.)
- And there are sometimes three or four states from which to pick:
- where the employer or seller is located (state of incorporation or principal place of business)
- where the employee or purchaser is located
- where the place of performance is located.
- So take the opportunity to pick the law that is most likely to do what your client already presumes will be done: your restrictive covenants will be enforced.
- Relatively speaking, Delaware –often the default state of incorporation– is a solid and defensible choice.
Sometimes a party to a contract gets greedy. As an example, sometimes a party seeks an onerous non-competition provision in a contract. Will a court enforce it? Will the court modify the agreement if it is too broad in some respect? Let’s see how this played out in a real case. 
H2 Non-Compete & Trade Secrets Law Blog 