Associate vet agreements that match how your clinic actually operates

Verbal arrangements often leave too much open to interpretation once questions come up about pay, rosters, client records, restraint wording, equipment use or whether the associate is really being treated as an employee or contractor. In a veterinary clinic, the factual working arrangement can matter as much as the contract wording, so the document needs to line up with what actually happens in practice. A written agreement gives you a clearer starting point and helps identify issues before the relationship becomes harder to unwind.

It will usually deal with the associate's role, whether the arrangement is intended to be employment or contracting, how fees or remuneration work, scheduling expectations, use of rooms and equipment, confidentiality, clinic records, professional responsibilities, and how the arrangement can end. For veterinary businesses, the wording may also need to reflect how client and patient information is handled, who controls communications with clients, and what happens to records, goodwill or clinic property when the relationship finishes.

The drafting depends on practical details such as whether the associate works set hours, how they are paid, who controls bookings, whether they use your systems and staff, and how much independence they really have. It can also turn on whether the associate brings their own clients, how records are stored, and what policies already sit behind the arrangement. Drafting decisions should be based on the arrangement itself, including the documents, responsibilities and factual context, not just the label you want to use.

Usually, that is risky. A generic associate agreement may miss issues that are common in veterinary practice, such as handling client and patient records, use of clinic facilities, allocation of professional responsibilities, and the way remuneration is structured. It may also assume a contractor model when the day-to-day setup looks closer to employment. A tailored document is more useful where the clinic's actual business practices need to be reflected, especially in a regulated setting where paperwork and conduct need to align.

After you provide instructions, a lawyer will review the arrangement details and prepare the agreement for your clinic. Timing can vary depending on how settled the engagement model is and whether there are existing documents to work from, such as offer letters, contractor terms or clinic policies. Once the draft is prepared, you can review it and raise questions about the wording. If you later want broader support, such as dispute help or ongoing HR management, that would need to be arranged separately from this service.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Associate Vet Agreement service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.