What A Healthcare Attorney Checks First

Associate dentist contracts: the terms that follow you long after you leave

The first employment agreement of a dental career usually gets signed in a hurry, under a friendly reassurance — “it’s our standard contract” — and with all the attention on one number: the compensation. Which is ironic, because the compensation is the part least likely to hurt you. The clauses that follow you for years are the ones nobody reads out loud at the interview.

Daniel Schulte of Kerr Russell has spent more than three decades as counsel to Michigan’s dental profession — his firm has represented the Michigan Dental Association for generations of dentists — and when he joined us on the Dentelligentsia podcast, he walked through the terms that actually shape careers. Here’s what deserves your attention before you sign.

The term is an illusion — check the termination clause

A three-year agreement sounds like three years of security. Then you read the termination section: either party may terminate without cause on 30 days’ notice. Schulte’s summary is the clearest we’ve heard: “Nobody has a three-year contract. If it can be terminated without cause on 30 days’ notice, what you have is a 30-day contract.”

That’s not automatically a dealbreaker — short notice periods cut both ways, and you may want the exit too. The point is to price the job accurately: don’t relocate your family, buy a house, or turn down other offers on the strength of a “term” the next paragraph quietly deletes.

While you’re in that section, check that for-cause termination runs in both directions. Employers always reserve the right to fire for cause; first drafts rarely give the associate the mirror right. “If you don’t get paid what you’re supposed to get paid, when you’re supposed to get paid,” Schulte says, “there’s no reason you should have to give notice and keep working.”

The non-compete: two years, a pin map, and the missing exception

The covenant not to compete is the clause that follows you after the job ends — sometimes for years, across the exact geography where you’ve built your life. Schulte’s yardsticks for Michigan: duration beyond two years is hard to justify, and the radius should come from evidence, not a round number that felt right to whoever drafted it. His method: “Plot every patient address on a map. If a five-mile radius captures the pins, five miles is reasonable. Nobody is driving 20 miles past every other dental office to see you.”

Then there’s the exception almost no first draft includes: an out for short-tenure departures. “If you’ve been there a year or less, you are no competitive threat leaving the practice,” Schulte told us. An associate who lasted eight months shouldn’t carry a two-year exile from their own town. Ask for the carve-out. The response tells you something either way.

The negotiation is also a diagnostic

That’s the underrated function of contract review: it’s a preview of the relationship. Schulte’s framing has stayed with us: “If you ask for the unreasonable things to be taken out and they refuse — that’s a window into the soul of your potential employer. If they act like this while they’re courting you, what will they act like once you’ve signed and have no leverage at all?”

A reasonable employer explains their terms and moves on the indefensible ones. An employer who won’t negotiate the overreach while recruiting you has told you exactly how disputes will go later — and you should believe them.

The habit that matters more than any clause

Schulte’s larger counsel applies to every contract of a career, from the first associate agreement to the retirement sale: bring your advisors in at the beginning, not the eleventh hour. “It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish to wait until the eleventh hour to involve your attorney, your accountant, and your insurance people. You find out you’re miles from ready to close.” The pattern he’s proudest of proves the alternative: a couple whose employment agreements he reviewed out of dental school, whose practice purchase he papered, and whose retirement sale he closed this year. “The complete life cycle — that’s the most satisfying thing.”

We run our side of the table the same way — and we’d note that the associate agreement is often where practice real estate first touches your career, because the non-compete you sign today draws the map of where you’re allowed to open your own practice tomorrow. Read it with that future in mind.

Hear the full conversation with Daniel Schulte of Kerr Russell on the Dentelligentsia podcast — including why he says a lease is closer to a loan than a contract, and the lease provisions that decide a practice’s exit.

And when your career reaches its own real estate chapter — first office, purchase, or renewal — talk to us. Tenants and buyers only.

For more on our interview with Daniel Schulte, check out our article, “Before You Sign That Associate Contract: What A Healthcare Attorney Checks First.”