SUCCESSION PLANNING: ASSOCIATE BUY-INS TO A SPECIALTY PRACTICE

摘要

Bringing a new associate into practice ownership has even more challenges to it than adopting a new puppy or kitten. (They can't be locked in a room if they bark too much!) And yet, succession planning is critical to the life and health of the practice. When practice owners and associates start to talk about a partnership, they tend to focus on the specific tasks that need to be completed in order for the buy-in to occur. For example—how much is the practice worth? Who is going to draw up the legaldocuments? How will each person be compensated in the new ownership structure? No question these are important issues; however, it is first critical to determine if the seller and potential buyer are a good match and will work together well as a team. Partnerships generally don't fail because the practice value wasn't correctly established or the legal documents were improperly drawn up. They fail because for the same reasons marriages fail—the individuals don't have the same long-term vision for the partnership, they can't communicate well and they don't have a mechanism for solving differences.