I think part of what is going on here is that lawyers are incentivized to identify and mitigate risk. They don’t carry the downside to over-mitigating risk — in this case the company writ large and employees do, but lawyers are penalized — or at least they perceive they will be penalized - if they don’t identify any conceivable risk for their clients.
There are also a lot of asshole business owners out there. A friend once had a former employer successfully enforce a non-compete agreement against him for structured cabling work while his daughter was undergoing treatment for leukemia. He had to drive 200 miles one-way to work for a year to avoid being sued. For snaking Ethernet cables behind drywall.
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I think part of what is going on here is that lawyers are incentivized to identify and mitigate risk. They don’t carry the downside to over-mitigating risk — in this case the company writ large and employees do, but lawyers are penalized — or at least they perceive they will be penalized - if they don’t identify any conceivable risk for their clients.
There are also a lot of asshole business owners out there. A friend once had a former employer successfully enforce a non-compete agreement against him for structured cabling work while his daughter was undergoing treatment for leukemia. He had to drive 200 miles one-way to work for a year to avoid being sued. For snaking Ethernet cables behind drywall.