Ready to join a rival, you urge several subordinates and clients to come along. You assume you're safe because you lack a noncompete agreement.

Big mistake. Your poaching attempt may bring you big trouble. A growing number of companies sue job hoppers for luring staffers or customers while still employed there. Such lawsuits often claim breach of fiduciary duty. One financial-services concern waged a nasty court fight that stalled defections for months after a manager handed out applications for his new workplace during an office party shortly before he joined the competitor.

In addition, costly litigation over your pre-exit antics "can cast you in a bad light at your new employer," says Christopher Stief, head of the employee defection and trade secrets practice for Fisher & Phillips, a national law firm. "You don't want to have this happen to you."

Even a threatening letter from your old bosses can jeopardize your move. "Just the whiff of a suit is enough to spook an employer," notes Allan Bloom, an employment law specialist for Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in New York. "I have seen offers pulled."

There are ways to avoid landing in legal hot water when you jump ship to a rival. Experts recommend choosing your words and deeds carefully from the outset of the courtship until you clean out your office.

Beginning with your job interview, never suggest how many loyal co-workers would tag along with you if you got hired. Some skittish businesses reject candidates for boasting about their ability to recruit teammates. "It would be a negative," the general counsel of a major high-technology concern says. "You question the ethics of that individual."

And don't reveal secret customer information to a hiring manager. You'd be safer -- and viewed more favorably -- describing your annual sales and commissions, without giving the exact number of sneakers you peddled to Foot Locker last year.

Brett Senior & Associates, a law firm in Conshohocken, Pa., sued accountant Stephen Fitzgerald last year soon after he quit and joined Fesnak & Associates, a Blue Bell accounting firm that Brett Senior considered a competitor. While discussing his possible employment, Fitzgerald showed several Fesnak partners a list of about 69 clients he served plus the fees paid by 48, the suit alleged.

Mary A. McLaughlin, a U.S. district court judge in Philadelphia, dismissed nearly all of the suit's charges this past July. Among other things, she said, Brett Senior failed to prove those client names and fees paid "were its property."

Still, the judge ordered Fitzgerald to stand trial on his alleged breach of fiduciary duty for calling 20 clients before he left. Fifteen clients followed him. He "conceded that at least some of these contacts were solicitations," her ruling noted. "An employee cannot solicit customers for a rival business."

In court filings, Fitzgerald denied any wrongdoing. He quit Fesnak six months ago for a better job and declines to comment on the case, according to his attorney Bruce E. Rodger.

You can steer clear of such legal troubles by keeping customers clueless about your new employer's identity. You shouldn't even announce your fresh title, phone number or email address before you resign.

As an extra precaution, conceal your departure plans from everyone at work except your supervisor. "Almost anything you say about your intentions to leave could cross that line," cautions Keith Wexelblatt, a senior counsel for Reebok International.

Other job hoppers get in trouble because they suddenly treat differently some subordinates they hope will follow them. "They try to take the distasteful things off the employee's plate" or overlook that staffer's mistakes, explains Steven L. Manchel, a partner at Manchel & Brennan, a law firm in Newton, Mass.

It's also wise to seek legal advice, bankrolled by your employer-to-be, about proper exit behavior. Reebok retains legal specialists like Manchel to coach every incoming executive and certain managers. "I just hope we can stop people from doing stupid things," Wexelblatt says.

The confidentiality of your chats with an attorney vanishes, however, if you email her from work. "The minute you think of leaving, stop using the company computer" for personal matters, suggests a Washington trial lawyer who handles cases involving officials joining rivals.

Even bringing home sensitive documents during your final days could raise red flags. Bottom line: Leave your holiday card list at the office -- especially if it includes names of key customers that competitors don't know about.

You may woo former clients and co-workers once your new job starts as long as your efforts don't involve confidential information, Manchel says. He quit a Boston law firm 10 years ago to launch his own shop.

The day after he resigned, the lawyer recalls, "I informed my most significant litigation clients -- and they all continue to use me."

Missouri State University has hired a former vice president of Strong Law Firm as its new general counsel.

MSU’s Board of Governors executive committee today approved the hiring of Clifton “Clif” Smart, who begins Dec. 1. He will be paid $130,000 annually plus a car allowance, according to an MSU news release.

Smart was with Strong Law Firm PC for 15 years. He had been a shareholder there since 1995 and vice president since 1998. His practice consisted mostly of catastrophic injury, medical malpractice and commercial cases.

Smart holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law and a bachelor of arts degree from Tulane University.

Smart replaces John Black, who begins as general counsel at City Utilities on Dec. 1, according to CU spokesman Joel Alexander. Black was with the university for 12 years.

The lawyer, Ed Jacobs, refused to say if Robert Levy's agreement would be a guilty plea. Levy has not been charged with any crime.

"We're going to get it over with in one day of bad publicity," Jacobs said Wednesday.

Levy did not return a call seeking comment from The Associated Press. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office would not comment on the scheduled court appearance.

Levy was elected in 2005 to preside over a city where the political corruption is almost as famous as the casinos. Four of the last nine mayors have been charged with taking bribes; three men who were on the city council last year are now in prison in another bribery case.

Levy disappeared from city life in late September before resurfacing to resign on Oct. 10. He cited ill health and a federal investigation into his Vietnam war record as his reasons for leaving.

The Press of Atlantic City reported last fall that the Vietnam veteran's claims that he was a member of the Green Berets were untrue. He apologized, but federal authorities have been looking into whether Levy made that claim to increase his veteran benefit payments.

During his absence from city hall, Levy spent time in a substance abuse and mental health treatment center in northern New Jersey. Jacobs described the mayor's time there as "a detox situation."

Boston legal powerhouse Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge is expanding across the pond. Edwards Angell announced plans yesterday to acquire U.K. law firm Kendall Freeman, adding some 50 London lawyers to its current stable of 550 attorneys, about half of whom work in Boston.

“London is the largest legal market by far in Britain and one of the largest anywhere in the world,” Edwards Angell’s Chip DeWitt said. “We think this merger gives us a great platform to add to the number of attorneys we have there.”

No cash will change hands as part of the deal, nor are any layoffs planned at Kendall Freeman, which specializes in insurance and reinsurance law. Instead, plans merely call for the British firm to phase in the “Edwards Angell” name over the next 18 months.

DeWitt said the deal also opens the door for Edwards Angell to help Kendall Freeman expand beyond insurance law. The U.S. firm specializes in several areas, including private equity, initial public offerings and patent law.

“The game plan would be to try to increase the number of attorneys in London,” DeWitt said.

Yesterday’s announcement came almost two years to the day after Providence’s Edwards Angell and Boston’s Palmer & Dodge - two old-line New England law firms - merged to create Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly ranks the combined entity as the state’s sixth-largest firm in terms of how many Bay State attorneys it employs.

Film footage apparently showing a man's teenage killers appearing in court has been posted on YouTube.

Earlier this month, Glasgow's High Court heard that three of the youths had boasted about the killing of William Smith, 21, in a clip that was reportedly posted on the video-sharing website.

Now, what appears to be more film of the youths taken during a hearing at the High Court, has also surfaced on the website.

The clip, called "Gorbals" which runs for two minutes and 44 seconds, appears to show the teenagers from behind, sitting in the dock with a judge working in the background.

They are made to stand up just before the video ends.

It has been posted by a webuser called "chrismccann1888", and has already had more than 120 views.

Mr Smith was attacked with wooden sticks and punched and kicked in Glasgow's Gorbals area on December 29 last year. He died several days later in the city's Southern General Hospital.

Jason McFadden, 19, George O'Connor, 18, Iain Stevenson, 19 and Alexander Harvey, 18, admitted the culpable homicide of William Smith, 21. They were jailed for eight years.

Whoever shot the film faces a potential contempt of court charge, for which the maximum sentence is two years in jail and an unlimited fine.

She says her complaints to ethics authorities about Sasso's allegedly unjust behavior and her cooperation in an FBI inquiry about Sasso's handling of a case caused a backlash among her superiors because the judge was a "political ally, friend and crony" of the firm.

As for sexual harassment, the suit says D'Onofrio and other women complained about unwelcome sexual comments and touching by DiFrancesco, but no corrective action was taken.

D'Onofrio recently underwent reconstructive surgery after a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2006. Before the surgery, DiFrancesco "asked her if she was planning on ‘getting really big boobs,'" the suit says.

In a telephone interview after the suit was filed, DiFrancesco said of that allegation, "It's absolutely not true. I can't recall saying those things and I know I would not have said things in those ways."

As for the rest of the personal charges against him, "a couple of things were fabricated," he says.

"It's not something I like to read, and I'm very unhappy about it and I'm very angry about it," says DiFrancesco, who was acting governor in 2001 at the end of a 25-year career in the state Legislature.

The suit names the firm, not individual partners, one of whom is Assemblyman Christopher Bateman, R-Somerset.

According to the complaint, DiFrancesco once asked D'Onofrio if she planned to wear a bathing suit to a professional function. In 2002, he asked her to stay a night in his hotel suite in Atlantic City after a League of Municipalities meeting and then go to a Beach Boys concert with him.