When the buying and selling dentists are negotiating the terms of their practice transaction, in some situations they want to address current employees of the practices. The selling dentist may want to provide some security for some of the staff that is currently employed at the practice or there may be some staff that currently have employment contracts that must be addressed. You would consider such employees as legacy employees and want to make sure that the terms for the employees employment are spelled out in the practice transaction documents.
The first thing to address is if there are any employees (including dentists, not just administrative or hygiene staff) that have employment contracts that may survive the practices sale. The purchasing dentist wants to ensure the terms of the any such employment contract are known and want to address them before finalizing the dental practice transaction.
After addressing any employees that have any current employment contracts, you would look to address and employees that the seller would want to make sure are “taken care of”. There may be an office manager that has been planning to retire in two years and the selling dentist would like to ensure that the office manager will stay employed with the practice to achieve that goal.
A major factor to consider is that you do not want to handcuff the purchasing dentists so that they are forced to keep on employees that they may not get along with or do not fit in the new office culture the purchasing dentists wishes to bring to the office.