Page 13 - Dallas Vol 5 No 4

employee rights and employment laws that will broaden protections for employees. ere will be more rules and regulations for businesses to follow. One of those chang- es may be the shi ing dynamics of non-compete law in which it may become easier for employees to leave a work- place to nd employment for a competing rm. He cites changes in Massachusetts and New York laws in which recently- passed laws state that if an employer releases an employee without cause that employer can’t saddle the employee with a non-compete clause.
A continuing expansion of arbitration will also be one of those trends he says. “Because the courts are so back- logged, it can o en take two or three years to bring a case to trial which is very slow and as a result a lot of compa- nies, big and small, have opted to put arbitration clauses
or arbitration agreements in place. e American Arbitra- tion Association generally wants to get a case to hearing in less than 12 months, which gets the dispute over, reduces attorneys’ fees and allows the parties to move forward. ose and other factors have caused a steady increase in arbitration because it certainly is “quicker.”
One of the challenges the industry faces is rate pres- sure. “And rightly so. Attorneys are going to have to come up with ways to control or at least keep attorneys’ fees in check. ere’s another problem before the legal industry as a whole. A lot of times people have a case, but the ‘en- try fee’ may be hundreds of thousands of dollars which is o en cost prohibitive. Somebody comes in and says, ‘A company owes me $80,000 in commissions, will you take my case?’ Unfortunately, the answer is no because the cli-
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