Associate Contracts: What to Check Before You Sign

AVMA publishes guidance for veterinarians evaluating a job offer, and it's worth reading before anything else — but it's thinner than a general attorney's contract checklist.

It sets two clear, self-described norms for restrictive covenants: a non-compete's geographic scope should track roughly 80% of the practice's patient base, and one to three years is standard for duration.

Those are AVMA's own stated norms, not law — enforceability still runs entirely through your state, which is covered in full on our non-compete page.

What AVMA's own guidance does not walk through: continuing-education allowance, who pays for licensure and association dues, malpractice and tail coverage, or termination provisions.

Those are exactly the categories a contract can use to hide real cost — and where the rest of this checklist focuses.

Start with which model you're actually being offered, since the three are structured differently and headline percentages are not comparable across them.

A straight base salary is the simplest to evaluate. ProSal pays a guaranteed base that functions as a recoverable draw against a percentage of your production, and you're paid whichever is greater — so the base is an advance against future production, not a floor plus a bonus.

AVMA's own data put roughly 56% of associates on ProSal in 2024, making it the default model rather than an alternative one.

Pure production pay drops the guaranteed base entirely.

If any production is involved, ask whether it's calculated on production or on collections — collections shifts a share of the practice's bad-debt risk onto you — whether the percentage applies to gross or net revenue, and how shared, referred or technician-performed work gets attributed to you.

If the base is structured as ProSal, ask directly whether negative accrual applies, whether any shortfall rolls forward indefinitely or is capped to a lookback period, and whether the agreement converts to a true guarantee once you clear a production threshold.

The mechanics behind all of this — including why negative accrual hits new graduates hardest — are covered in full on our ProSal and production pay page; this checklist only tells you what to ask before you sign.

Confirm first whether your state permits non-competes at all. California, Minnesota, North Dakota and Oklahoma void virtually all employee non-competes outright, which makes the specific wording of the clause in your contract close to irrelevant if you're practicing in one of them.

Where they are permitted, AVMA's own guidance frames the norm as roughly 80% of the practice's patient base for geographic scope and one to three years for duration — useful benchmarks, though enforceability ultimately turns on your state's own reasonableness test, not on AVMA's language.

Confirm exactly what activity is restricted (all veterinary practice, or a defined species or specialty), what the radius is measured from — the specific hospital you worked at, or every location the employer owns — and whether the restriction survives if you're terminated without cause.

Check separately for a non-solicitation clause covering clients, staff, or both.

It's a different restriction with different legal treatment, and a tightly drafted client non-solicitation can constrain a future move more than the non-compete itself does.

State-by-state detail — published as each state is researched and dated, including states that use an income threshold instead of a pure reasonableness test — is on our non-compete page.

These line items rarely show up in a headline compensation figure, but they are real income or real cost depending on who pays for them — and they're exactly what AVMA's own contract guidance doesn't walk through.

Confirm who pays state licensure fees and required continuing education, and whether it's specified as a dollar allowance or an hour count rather than left as "as needed." Confirm who covers professional association dues if membership is expected of you.

On malpractice: confirm that coverage is provided, at what limits, and whether the employer's policy or an individual policy applies to you.

Coverage terms are not standardized across employers, so get the specifics in writing rather than assuming a level of protection.

Then ask the question a coverage-limit number doesn't answer on its own: is the policy occurrence-based or claims-made, and if claims-made, who pays for tail coverage after you leave.

That answer can determine whether leaving a job exposes you to an uninsured gap on claims arising from care you provided while you were still there.

Don't assume a W-2 salary means you're automatically covered by the practice's policy — W-2 vs 1099: the real math covers why AVMA PLIT markets individual coverage to employed veterinarians too, and the actual policy limits.

61% of 2025 veterinary graduates received a signing bonus, per AVMA's own senior survey — common enough to expect, though AVMA has not published an average dollar amount in either its 2025 or 2026 report.

If one is offered, confirm in writing whether it's repayable, in full or prorated, if you leave before a stated date.

A repayment provision on a signing bonus is a standard feature of professional-services contracts generally, not something to assume away because the number looked like a gift.

If an employer offers to contribute toward your student loans directly rather than through a bonus, treat it as a separate mechanism from federal loan programs — confirm whether it's structured as taxable compensation and get the terms in writing rather than relying on a verbal description of what's being offered.

Confirm the contract's term length and how it renews — automatically, or only by mutual written agreement — and what notice period either side owes to end it.

Distinguish termination for cause from termination without cause; notice periods, severance, and whether restrictive covenants survive often differ between the two.

Confirm what happens to any ProSal negative-accrual balance, unused CE allowance, or pending production bonus if the relationship ends mid-cycle — these are exactly the details a template agreement is least likely to spell out on its own.

Every one of these should have a clear answer written into the document itself, not in a conversation you half-remember.

None of this tells you whether a specific offer is a good one — that depends on your market, your specialty and your own priorities, which is exactly why it needs a professional read rather than a generic list.

What it should do is make sure you're asking the right questions before you sign, not after.

Comparing offers across employer types?

See how corporate and private ownership actually change these terms, and if debt is part of your calculation, our debt-to-income page covers how a contract's numbers map onto your loan balance.

Ready to compare real offers?

Browse open veterinarian positions.