During your externship, you will participate in conferences with clients and learn first-hand the concerns faced by practice owners and their employees. You will analyze employment agreements and learn what makes a fair deal as well as what you, as a prospective employer or employee, will want to consider in your own contracts. Listening to clients and assisting with the drafting of new agreements, settlements, and legal communications, will offer you practical insight into how contract failures and disputes occur and how to resolve them. You may participate in practice purchase and sale negotiations, learning how practice sales are financed and conducted--it’s a lot more than just signing on a dotted line--and how to structure relationships among owners in practice buy-ins. You will gain valuable concrete experience as to what makes a successful veterinary practice and how to improve it, whether by increasing earnings, revamping compensation and/or profits, improving employee morale, leveraging staff, or achieving a higher quality of medicine. You will research emerging legal and ethical issues, evaluate how they may impact veterinarians and how you can influence the future of veterinary medicine.

Besides working closely with Dr. Lacroix, you will research and write about a topic that interests you (recent projects have included:  preparing for natural disaster, vaccine liability, electronic medical records, business ethics and profit-making, the emergence of holistic veterinary medicine, competing with internet pharmacies and pet guardianship vs. pet ownership).  Depending on the length of your externship, you may write an article suitable for publication in a veterinary journal and develop a Power Point presentation.