Christopher Stief

Chris Stief is managing partner of the Philadelphia office of Fisher Phillips, a management side labor and employment law firm with 38 offices throughout the United States. Chris is immediate past co-chair and co-founder of the firm’s Employee Defection and Trade Secrets Practice Group, and a core member of the International Employment Practice Group and Financial Services Industry Group. His practice involves representing employers in labor and employment matters, with a nationwide and international practice focusing on restrictive covenant and trade secrets issues. This includes litigating and advising companies on matters relating to covenants not to compete, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements, unfair competition, employee raiding and team moves, trade secrets, duty of loyalty, the U.S. Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), the U.S. Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA), and various state trade secrets and unfair competition statutes. He has a particular focus on advising and providing representation on restrictive covenant issues for companies that have a multi-state or multi-national workforce, and a consequent need to interpret and account for the varying laws of diverse jurisdictions. There are five main segments to Chris’s practice:
1. Drafting & Implementing Restrictive Covenants & Confidentiality Programs: Chris regularly assists companies with drafting restrictive covenants and helps clients develop programs to protect their competitive assets against employee defection. He places particular emphasis on advising and creating such programs for businesses that operate on a multi-state or multi-national basis, helping manage and implement a consistent approach across a broad range of sometimes conflicting jurisdictional law and workplace cultures.
2. Employee Transitions -- Strategic Planning, Advice & Counseling: Chris spends a good deal of time engaged in strategic planning with companies about potential recruits or upcoming employee transitions. This includes risk assessment of prospective recruiting ventures, as well as the formulation of strategic options to address or minimize legal risks while preserving the business value of a hiring and expansion opportunity.
3. Restrictive Covenant, Trade Secrets and Employee Raiding/Team Move Litigation: Chris has handled litigation and other contentious non-compete, trade secrets, employee raiding and team-move disputes throughout the United States, as well as international matters arising out of key jurisdictions in Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East. This includes both enforcement and defense, and many of his litigation and arbitration matters have involved applications for temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions, along with claims for money damages. Chris has experience handling cross-border restrictive covenant litigation, including prosecuting and resisting anti-suit injunction actions in both U.S. and E.U. jurisdictions involving the application of the EU’s Brussels Regulation (Recast) on Personal Jurisdiction.
Chris is a Chambers USA Ranked Lawyer for Pennsylvania Labor & Employment, is "AV" Peer Review Rated by Martindale-Hubbell, and has been selected for inclusion in Who's Who Legal USA – Management Labour & Employment and in Best Lawyers for both Litigation-Labor & Employment Law and Trade Secrets Law. Chris is a past Co-Chair of both the Philadelphia Bar Association and the Delaware County (PA) Bar Association Labor & Employment Law Committees. He serves on the Board of Directors of the International Employers Forum, a non-profit organization with chapters in the U.S. and Europe dedicated to providing education and networking opportunities for legal and human resources professionals whose organizations employ workers globally. He is a founder and co-leader of the Fisher Phillips Financial Services Recruitment Litigation Conference, a well-established participatory conference focusing on issues relevant to restrictive covenant litigation among broker-dealers, private wealth management firms, Registered Investment Advisors (RIA), private banks and insurance carrier distribution networks and agencies. Conferences have been held since 2003, and topics addressed have ranged from raiding to FINRA and SEC regulations, and application of the Protocol for Broker Recruiting. In September of 2018, Chris was one of the keynote speakers and acted as a co-organizer of a conference in London, Global Business Protections 2018: International Restrictive Covenants and Confidential Information.