Protecting your goodwill

Private practice owners must strike the right balance between dissuading any leaver from breaching a restrictive covenant while at the same time ensuring the wording is not so wide as to risk being seen as unreasonable ­– and therefore unenforceable. Lynne Abbess and Puja Solanki report.

In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile cases in the High Court dealing with the protection of goodwill and the enforceability of restrictive covenants.

For most owners of private medical practices, the goodwill in the practice is one of, if not the, most valuable financial assets they will own.