I know some of our readers are associates and soon to be graduates, and I’d like to look at what can be a couple of often neglected areas in your growth as a practitioner.
First, the contract. Many of you choose to be an associate for a couple of years after dental school to either get more experience or with a possibility of buying into the practice. In both of these areas, your contract is a very important document, and not a place to skimp financially. Before you sign an associate contract, have an attorney review it, and be sure you have a good contract law attorney who has seen a number of this type of contracts. Your brother-in-law who works in family law is not a good choice. There are any number of points in an associate contract that you must review. Your non-compete is essential to review if you ever hope to open your own practice. Some corporate contracts say that when you leave the next doctor hired can bill insurances under your credentialing. These are just two of the many things you might blow past, but your attorney will notice. Yes, there is a cost involved, but there might be a much bigger cost down the road when you want out of your contract and are presented with the clauses you didn’t think were important.
Another area where an attorney should be involved is when a doctor offers an associate position, with an option to buy into the practice. In this case, if you will be growing and marketing the practice, an attorney should be adding something requiring an appraisal of the practice before you start working, so your portion of practice growth can be factored into the purchase price. There should also be a certain date at which both you and the owner doctor decide if buying in is a good choice for you both. An attorney cannot only word these things properly, but can also take the weight of these questions off your shoulders. “Of course I trust you doctor, but my attorney is insisting upon it!” Is a great way to broach difficult topics in the contract.
When you are finally ready to open your own practice, you will be signing a lease or purchase agreement with a landlord. While there are some landlords still out there who create very simple leases, most now have their own attorneys telling them that they should pay for absolutely nothing, and toss all the financial burdens to the tenant. If you don’t have an equally savvy attorney working for you, you may just sign away a lot of rights you should have kept. You’ll be thrilled with your new practice at first, but as the bills start rolling in for things you feel the landlord should be paying, you will regret not having done your due diligence before signing.
Finally, I am aware just how expensive an attorney can be, but you can limit those costs with some planning on your part. Read your entire document completely, get all your questions and issues in place, and then present them all together to your attorney. The more phone calls, emails and re-writes the attorney has to do, the more it will cost you. Keep in mind that in our current business climate, attorneys’ fees are not luxury items, they’re necessities…….necessities just as required as equipment, computers and staff for a growing practitioner.
