Over the years, prominent legal headhunting firms have squabbled with departed recruiters who allegedly violated restrictive covenants in their employment agreements through affiliations with rival recruiting shops. The geographic proximity of a recruiter’s new firm and the amount of time before they started working for a competitor have given headhunting firms grounds to sue.

Such noncompete agreements are textbook examples of what the Federal Trade Commission’s new rule would prohibit, while other restrictive covenants, like NDAs and nonsolicitation agreements, fall into a “gray area” as to their applicability to the ban, said Rochester, New York-based employment lawyer Peter Glennon.