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Non-Compete Defense Fund

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My name is Jonathan Pollard and I am the principal of a law firm called Pollard PLLC. As many folks know, one of our biggest missions as a firm is defending poor, working and middle class Americans against abusive non-compete agreements. 

The harsh reality is that America is in the midst of an epidemic of non-compete abuse. In the past, non-compete agreements were rare and reserved only for high-ranking executives. But not today. In America today, most companies are abusing non-compete agreements. At law, non-compete agreements are only ever supposed to be enforced to protect a legitimate business interest. That generally means (1) valuable, confidential information that isn't available to anybody else in the market or (2) special customer relationships that nobody else in the market has access to. In 2018, given the rise of the information age, those types of situations where non-compete agreements serve a legitimate purpose are few and far between. 

But that doesn't stop companies from aggressively pushing non-compete agreements on their employees. Today, many companies in America are using non-compete agreements to lock up employees, suppress wages and eliminate fair and ordinary competition. That is immoral and is causing very real harm. 

We routinely represent clients who have had non-compete agreements as security guards, a nursing aid, factory workers, and even foster parents. In these types of cases, we'll often accept the client for no money up front. Our first goal is to defend them, help them keep their job, earning a living and take care of their families. If we are able to somehow get paid off the case, great. If not, great. This isn't like a personal injury lawyer taking a case on a contingency fee. It's much different. This is me DEFENDING you in a non-compete matter. No personal injury. No insurance company. No guaranteed payout. And quite often, no money at all. 

I have defended dozens of poor, working and middle class people against abusive and illegal non-compete agreements. We have stepped in to defend someone, fought in litigation for a year, invested $150,000 worth of attorney time, paid thousands of dollars worth of litigation costs out of my own pocket, then agreed to a walk away, where the company dropped the non-compete case and no money changed hands. Why? Because that was best for the client. Because the client needed to get back to work. Because I have a moral obligation to help as many people as I can. 

In other situations, we have put in $125,000 worth of attorney time and thousands of dollars worth of out of pocket expenses. And we're able to get the case settled and get the client out of their non-compete for payment of $25,000 in attorneys' fees. That means we just took a discount of $100,000. I know a lot of lawyers. I don't know anybody else who has a small firm and takes on that sort of risk, purely because the cause is righteous. 

But the reality is that we can only do so much and I can only do so much. Although we do plenty of pro-bono and low-bono legal work for people who cannot afford our help, this is still a business. We are not a non-profit. We are a law firm. I will never take cases that I consider unethical. I will never represent clients who are immoral just to make money. That goes against my credo. But this is a business. And, as a result, most of our time is dedicated to working on cases that actually pay us money. 

The purpose of this campaign is to increase the amount of bandwidth we can give to defending poor, working and middle class people in non-compete litigation. The more money you donate, the more manpower we can dedicate to these cases and the more of my time I can spend helping these people. 

I have seen to many lives destroyed by non-compete abuse. Help working people fight back. 

You can read more about me here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-pollard-9761333/

Donations 

  • Ed Rogan
    • $50 
    • 5 yrs

Organizer

Jonathan Pollard
Organizer
Fort Lauderdale, FL

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