Ensuring Online Signature Legality for Independent Contractor Agreement in Australia

How to eSign a document: online signature legality for Independent Contractor Agreement in Australia

hi my name is Robert Shelly with Shelly law and my Law Firm assists Veterinary practice owners with drafting independent contractor agreements uh so today I'm going to talk about how to craft a strong independent contractor agreement for veterinary associate uh from the practice perspective uh so the first thing you want to make certain that you're doing correctly is classifying them uh I find many practice owners want to classify some associate as an independent contractor to avoid having to pay benefits or employment tax on their compensation or any of the other things that would be associated with being an employee uh the IRS releases this 20 Factor test that goes into kind of what makes someone more an employee versus an independent contractor uh are you completely dictating their schedule the patients SL clients that they see um are they able to work elsewhere is it an exclusive relationship uh are you paying them via productivity model or base compensation with a guaranteed amount all of these factors would lean one way towards the other so you want to make certain you're kind of uh drafting the agreement in a way that makes them look more like an independent contractor than just kind of Faking it if that's the best way of saying it I mean the penalties associated with misclassification could be paying back taxes on the things that you you know you pay them down the road and perhaps some penalties as well uh the next thing would be the compensation model uh in my opinion only a productivity based agreement would make sense uh or perhaps hourly or shift rate a guaranteed base with a you know a full-time 40-hour work week does not make sense for an independent contractor so when you are paying an independent contractor it should be for the work that they do without any paid time off uh and the easiest way to do that is through some kind of productivity based model could be net collections so they would get a percentage of whatever the practice collects on their behalf um or uh you know per shift as I said before hourly is not normally something that's done in the veterinary industry but uh doing it that way would lean more towards them being an independent contractor versus an employee uh next benefits you shouldn't provide any of them so you shouldn't be paying for the malpractice Health Vision Dental disability life retirement continuing education dues and fees that needs to be the cost of the veterinary associate not the practice cost if their a true independent contractor uh restrictive covenants they still can be put in independent contract or agreement so it still makes sense from the practice perspective to have at least a strong non-compete non-solicit now any state where it's not completely prohibited there's a handful of those um but all of the other states where they are enforcable to an extent that's the standard is it must be reasonable essentially and uh is 50 mil reasonable from let's say it's you know you have four locations 50 mil for four location no that's that's very likely not reasonable uh one year 10 to 15 miles 15 maybe on the high side also depends upon is it a rural location or an urban location uh but that would be okay and I would suggest putting that in there and then a non-solicitation agreement as well so you don't want veteranary assistant coming in I mean the nightmare is they come in Snag the patients or in this case the clients with the animals um take employees obviously we all know in the veterinary industry staffing has been a major problem since Co um and so you want to prohibit them from and you can put language in it that says they can even hire anyone who's been employed to practice usually for like a 12- Monon look back so uh the restrictive covenants definitely a strong non-compete and non-solicit and then notice requirement um kind of a the point of an impended contractor agreement is it's very kind of easy to get in easy to get out so putting a 180-day notice requirement in it doesn't lean it or lead it to be more of an you know independent contractor agreement so I'd say 30 days is probably a good amount of time in the healthcare industry continuity of care is certainly important uh and so if you were to have a bunch of uh you know animals uh that are scheduled out a month in advance and then you lose a provider you can't you know provide care for them you don't have any backups that could be a problem so uh you want at least a 30-day notice to for either side to terminate the contract without cost so uh if you kind of put those things in place in an in in an independent contract or agreement um you know it could be a strong uh but Equitable agreement for both sides I mean hammering the veterinary associate with just like completely unfair Clauses or having it absolutely lopsided I don't think is a good recipe for long-term success um usually it breeds a lot of animosity on the side of the veteran associate I don't think that's good for any practice so if you have any questions about drafting an independent contractor agreement for a veteran associate please uh contact my Law firit phone number uh or contact information listed below in the description and I appreciate you watching the video thanks bye