Understanding the Lawfulness of Electronic Signatures for Alternative Work Offer Letters in the US

How to eSign a document: electronic signature lawfulness for Alternative Work Offer Letter in United States

hi my name is robert shelley with shelley law and my firm assists physicians with employment contract issues one fairly frequent question that i get mostly from people coming out of training is what happens if i sign an offer letter but i don't want to go through with signing the actual contract maybe you do a change in circumstances some kind of family issue maybe you got a better job offer somewhere else maybe you decided to move home instead of moving to a different city so basically the question is can a physician back out after signing an offer letter uh the short answer is yes probably um [Music] unless there's some kind of binding language in the offer letter which there almost never would be um the physician can't back out the offer letter just has kind of basic terms so normally it would be like okay here's what your compensation is maybe a brief review benefits the the term length maybe how to terminate the contract maybe a brief mention of non-compete it it is you know normally like one page document that just kind of briefly goes over here's what it's going to look like for your employment there are times where i'll have a physician get an offer letter and you know just the kind of cursory terms look great and then when we get the actual agreement it could absolutely change whether it's a good offer or not and so until the employment agreement is signed it's it's not going to be a binding document for that reason uh so let me give some instances of maybe why it looked okay the the job opportunity looked okay with the offer letter but once we got the actual employment agreement it changed um so one thing could be how to terminate the agreement it's i would say it's probably rarely put into an offer letter um but let's say uh normally a physician would have to provide either 60 or 90 days notice to terminate the contract without cause meaning they can kind of get out of the agreement for any reason that uh you know with the amount of required notice let's say the contract had a 12-month without cause termination notice well nobody wants that right uh once you give notice relationships change within the organization you're on your way out you're no longer building a practice and so if someone has a 12-month requirement to be an entire year of potential kind of awkward relationships and i would never suggest that a physician would have to give a year's notice i mean on the back end of that if you're currently in practice and you have to give 12 months notice there are very few practices that are willing to wait 12 months for the physician to give notice and be able to leave it just doesn't happen that way sometimes a physician's in uh you know and uh an organization is forecast that they will be needed a year or two down the line that that's a different story but if a physician is currently practicing and switching to a new job they're almost never to wait two months um another thing could be the terms of the non-compete so maybe you're expecting a reasonable non-compete maybe like one year 10 miles from your primary practice location um not competes kind of the reasonableness of non-competes very state to state it's pretty much like one of the only things that kind of varies in physician contracts but uh let's just say for instance it's one year five to ten miles from your primary practice location that's what you're expecting and then you get the contract and it's a two-year non-compete in 25 miles from every location that you practice in while employed with the employer that can change things substantially if someone is absolutely married to a town like they grew up there families there they want to raise their kids there and then they have some absolutely terrible non-compete which would essentially force them to move for a period of time that can make a great offer a terrible offer and so that's an essential term that could change that's not spelled out in the offer letter that could then you know make a great offer a pad offer um benefits as well generally there's not specific uh you know recitation of all the benefits that are offered you know what if the employer doesn't offer health coverage or disability or life or retirement they won't pay for your medical license and dea registration they won't give you anything for continuing medical education perhaps the time off you know it's bad like an average amount of total time off is 30 days so that would include sick days holidays vacation see me um let's say they offer you 15 total days i mean almost no physician has that small amount of time off and so that could change substantially whether the offer is good or bad so in short yes you do not have to go forward even if you've signed an offer letter because the terms of the employment agreement could change the offer substantially it can start in awkward conversations and the sooner that you give notice to the employer that you are not going to start the better um you know so people also ask all right well what could be like the absolute worst case scenario um well in this case if it's just an offer letter i would say it's it's a pretty low downside risk obviously if you sign an employment agreement and then wait until the week before you're about to start and then say hey i don't want to start the contract well the employer can certainly say that they've suffered some damages and potentially could come after you for that if you've just signed the offer letter without even seeing the employment agreement i'd say the the physician is fairly safe and backing out of it and you know looking elsewhere well i hope that was helpful if you have any questions you can call us at the number listed below in the description or you can reach us through our website shelleylaw.com that's c-h-e-l-l-a law.com and i appreciate you watching the video thanks [Music] you