Both you and the lawyer representing the employee must know the law in your jurisdiction concerning such covenants. Similarly, when drafting a will, you may need o learn about the rights of a surviving spouse in your jurisdiction as well as federal estate tax consequences. Likewise, a complaint for an unfamiliar cause of action would require research to discover the elements that must be pleaded. Finally, when drafting legislation, you need to be familiar with existing law related to the subject matter of the legislation. If you are familiar with all related statutes, you will avoid conflicts with existing law.
Legal research is an integral and necessary element of legal drafting.
When you wrote memoranda and briefs in your other legal writing courses, you probably reviewed the rules of logical organization, paragraph and sentence structure, word choice, grammar, and so forth. When you wrote those documents, you applied those rules and edited your work to ensure the rules were followed. Even if you were not consciously aware that you were doing so, you deliberately chose and organized each word, sentence, paragraph, and section of your memoranda and briefs. Unfortunately, however, you may easily forget such rules when you draft documents such as wills, contracts, pleadings, or statutes. The existence of forms might cause you to inadvertently ignore those rules during your drafting process.