The severance agreement gives the executive five days to sign, and the referring lawyer isn't going to remember that fast.

The severance agreement lands in the executive's inbox at 6 p.m., five business days to sign, a release of every claim attached to it, and a non-compete clause nobody bothered to read closely the day it was first signed three years ago. Across town, a GC is reading the same executive's resignation letter and doing the math on whether the non-compete actually holds up, because the company is about to find out the hard way if it does not.

Neither of them is thinking about an employment lawyer on Monday. By the time the clock starts running, that is the only name either of them wants.

The signing window runs on the document, not on a referral's memory

Employment lawyers refer the executives they cannot keep, usually a conflict, sometimes a capacity problem, and an occasional terminated executive finds a firm through word of mouth. Neither source moves at the speed the document actually demands. A five-day signing window does not pause while a referring lawyer gets around to remembering a name, and a non-compete triggered by a resignation does not wait for the GC's outside-counsel list to get updated.

The buyer here is reacting to a specific document with a specific deadline stapled to it. A severance offer, a clawback notice, a non-compete triggered by a resignation, a release with a signature line already dated. The firm that shows up the day that document lands is the one that gets the call, not the firm the referring lawyer meant to mention.

This is executive employment contract disputes, not wage-and-hour or volume-plaintiff work, a different practice and a different buyer entirely. Construction, commercial, and the other dispute pages on this hub are different fights with their own pages.

What a buyer is actually searching

The executive facing a live document searches specifically: non-compete attorney, severance negotiation lawyer, equity clawback review, executive employment contract dispute. Days on the clock, not weeks, and the search happens the night the document arrives.

The GC or employer searches differently: executive separation counsel, restrictive covenant enforcement, outside counsel for a departing executive. The urgency is company risk, not a personal signing deadline, but it is still urgency.

A generic "employment lawyer" campaign catches neither one. It wins the click from a wage-and-hour claim this practice does not handle and loses the executive with five days left to sign.

Objections we hear

Referring employment lawyers already send us this. What they cannot keep, when they remember to. The executive with a five-day signing window is often outside that referral chain entirely, searching alone at night.

We already rank for employment law. For the category. Not for the non-compete, the severance, or the clawback the real buyer is typing by name, document in hand.

HR handles these before they reach us. HR manages the company's side of the document. The executive on the other end is searching for their own counsel, on their own clock, independent of anything HR is doing.

One doctrine decides whether the clause the executive is staring at even survives

An executive reading a non-compete at 11 p.m. is reading it as if the words on the page are the final word. They are not, not everywhere. Some states will "blue pencil" an overbroad covenant, narrowing the geographic scope or the time period down to something a court considers reasonable and enforcing what is left. Other states void an unreasonable covenant entirely, the whole clause gone, not just the excessive part. A handful ban non-competes for most employees by statute regardless of what the contract says.

Which rule applies turns on which state's law governs, not on how the clause is worded. An executive who reads a broad non-compete and assumes it is fully enforceable, without checking which of those three outcomes their state actually applies, can walk away from leverage that was sitting in their favor the entire time.

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Lawyer-to-lawyer, in select circumstances

Lawyers may solicit other lawyers, and in select circumstances, when the target is referring counsel rather than the executive or the employer in the fight, direct mail or similar correspondence to other lawyers can be part of the work. That is an exception, not the default.

It is not a list of terminated executives. It is not a list of HR directors. It is not a list of GCs sitting on a live separation. It is not LinkedIn message outreach. Bar rules vary by state, and the firm confirms what it can run before anything goes out.

What runs, and what we will not do

Google ads built around the specific document an executive or GC actually types, a non-compete, a severance offer, an equity clawback, a release, not one generic "employment lawyer" campaign competing for wage-and-hour traffic it was never built to win. Foundational web presence, so the click lands on a firm that reads as having actually negotiated this exact document type, not a workplace-advocacy page that loses the click in the ten seconds it took to arrive.

LinkedIn placements aimed at employment counsel and corporate lawyers who already know which firm handles executive-level disputes, run as paid placements only, never InMail, connection-request sequences, or direct messages. We do not run that channel, and it is not part of this program under any name.

What we will not do: write to the executive or the HR department. We do not build a solicitation list of departing executives or companies with turnover, and we do not mail, email, or call an executive, HR director, or GC who has not searched or asked. We do not negotiate the release or litigate the covenant ourselves. We make the firm findable. The firm does the work.

Why a generalist agency gets this practice wrong

An agency selling "employment lawyer" leads at scale cannot tell an executive with a five-day signing window apart from a wage-and-hour claimant, and the bidding shows it. They also cannot separate executive contract disputes from the construction, commercial, and other dispute practices on this same hub, different fights with different buyers entirely.

We will run a tight campaign for a firm that closes fewer files at higher value, not a volume mill chasing every employment-law keyword in the market. That is the point of this page.

How this is billed

This is Visibility Program work, not the outbound program. You pay ad spend directly to the platforms, Google and, where it runs, LinkedIn. ROI Wire bills a retainer that scales with that spend, not a flat project fee and not a percentage of closed files.

A landing page may be included at no additional cost. A full website build is always quoted and billed separately. Copywriting, directory work, and the reputation surfaces an executive or GC checks before trusting a firm with a live, dated document sit under this track as the credibility layer that holds the traffic, not as a correspondence program running in parallel. Ads can be live in under a week. Approval on your side, the keywords, the spend, the page the click lands on, usually determines the timeline, not the platforms.

Who this fits, and who it does not

This fits firms that actually negotiate and litigate executive-level employment disputes, in the document types they know cold, with the capacity to turn a review around inside a five-day window. The lead worth the spend is an executive or GC with a real, dated document already in hand.

It does not fit a firm whose real book is general HR advice or wage-and-hour claims, a different practice entirely, or one that cannot move inside days. That is not construction, commercial, or the other dispute practices on this hub either, each of which lives on its own page.