> non-competes are held to be unenforceable

They're not completely unenforceable in California. And the company can make your life miserable by suing you because you have to hire and pay the lawyer to win the case.

However, you generally have to be someone at this guy's level before non-competes can even have a chance of being enforceable. And there are lots of weird restrictions--you have to have access to data that would be damaging to the business, the lockout time needs to be relatively short, probably has to be in your contract before signing, etc.

> And the company can make your life miserable by suing you because you have to hire and pay the lawyer to win the case.

This is the part that I can not understand about United States. How is this even allowed? It is literally bullying someone to submit, even if what you do is illegal.

One of the main reasons I choose to immigrate to EU instead of US

There are some restraints on the ability for someone to sue you just to give you a headache, such as dismissing a case with prejudice or anti-SLAPP laws.

The EU has it's own systemic issues. However, they are different because it is mostly based on a Napoleonic Law basis rather than Common Law basis.

The problem in the US is that judges don't throw around the "this was pretty obviously frivolous and you lost so you have to pay for the court costs" card anywhere nearly enough.

Another problem is that the lawyer doesn't share in the penalty even when it gets applied.

A final problem is that the lawyers and judge are all buddies and see each other for lots of cases, so they're unwilling to actually slap each other when one of them is being stupid.

I feel like it comes back down to the ethics. A lawyer should not accept the case, because they should know the case is not valid, but they do it regardless. If there was a repercussion for accepting too many invalid cases or suing people for not legal grounds, they would stop doing that.

But, that is not going to happen obviously.

I don't know, as long as lawyers are allowed to defend murderers, you cannot really argue why they wouldn't be allowed to defend companies in such a case.

There is a big difference between defending a basic human right (e.g. a murderers right to be judged fairly) and a company explicitly putting illegal clauses in a contract to bully their current and past employees. An ethical lawyer would (and should) pick up the first case, and advise the company to remove that clause in the second case, because its illegal and not enforceable, with its only purpose is to bully people.

There is a difference between defending someone who is indicted (the lawsuit is going to happen no matter what, and the defendant has a right to a lawyer), and initiating a lawsuit.