Don’t Burn Your Bridges When Leaving an Employer…

Earlier this month, I published an article in the Montreal Gazette regarding my departure from private practice (at Norton Rose Canada) and my move to an in-house counsel position and the legal ramifications involved therewith. This post is an abridged (inproved?) version of the full article, which can be found here.

As an employment and labour lawyer, I was very conscious of wanting to do the “right” and legal thing in accepting the offer from my new employer and letting my firm know that I was leaving. Legal issues aside, I loved where I worked and wanted to treat them with the same respect that I was treated with. However, there are important legal issues to consider when resigning from a job. My recent departure gave me the opportunity to think about them from a truly personal perspective.

First of all, in Quebec (and, in most cases, the common law provinces), employees cannot be dismissed without cause without some form of reasonable notice. The inverse is also true. The law often requires employees who resign to give their employers reasonable notice before they leave. The “two-week” rule people often refer to is not set in stone in Quebec. For example, if you are managing an important project and decide to leave in the middle of it, you can be required to give more notice. In the same way that an employee can sue an employer for insufficient notice, an employer can also sue an employee for the same thing. If the employer can prove that damages were suffered (i.e., the project failed due to the unannounced departure of a key employee), the employee could be on the hook for a significant sum of money.

Similarly, even if an employee does not sign a non-competition or confidentiality agreement, in Quebec, the law still obligates them to keep confidential (and not use) information they acquired during their employment. This so-called “duty of loyalty” persists for a reasonable period after employment. For example, it would be illegal to take confidential client lists and pricing information to a competitor. Employers will often file injunctions and suits for damages to protect their interests. It can be incredibly expensive for an employee to defend him or herself against such claims.

That said, I didn’t and won’t run into any of these problems. I gave my firm the notice they requested and closed out and transferred all of my files. In return, they treated me with respect and I will keep the wonderful friends and colleagues I made there.

On a Slaw-related note, I look forward to continuing to write, this time from the perspective of an in-house employment and labour lawyer.