Non-Solicitation Clauses for Clinicians: Clients, Staff and Ethics Codes

A non-compete restricts practice itself: it tries to bar a departing clinician from working in a geographic area for a period of time after they leave.

A non-solicitation clause leaves the clinician free to work anywhere and instead bars them from actively soliciting something specific — your current clients (a client non-solicit) or your employees (an employee non-solicit).

That difference is why the two clauses do not rise and fall together.

Minnesota's 2023 non-compete ban expressly does not cover non-solicitation agreements or agreements restricting the ability to use client lists.

Oklahoma's statute (title 15, section 219A) builds the same distinction in from the other side: a former employee may engage in the same or a similar business as long as they do not directly solicit the former employer's established customers.

As of this writing there is no federal rule banning employee non-competes — the federal rule adopted in 2024 was removed from the Code of Federal Regulations on February 12, 2026 — so whether either clause holds is decided by state law and state courts, with the ethics codes below shaping how your clinicians behave at the exit.

If you are weighing a restriction on where a clinician can practice at all, that is its own topic with its own state map: our guide to non-competes covers what is enforceable for therapists and behavioral health staff.

A client non-solicit says a departing clinician may not actively solicit your current clients — working your caseload and inviting it to follow.

What it cannot do is require a client to stay: the clause binds the clinician, not the client, and the client decides who provides their care.

That decision is protected from the other side of the relationship by the ethics codes your clinicians answer to.

The codes are consistent about departure.

NASW Code of Ethics standard 1.17(f) says social workers leaving an employment setting should inform clients of appropriate options for the continuation of services and of the benefits and risks of the options.

NASW standard 1.17(e) adds prompt notice and a search for transfer, referral or continuation of services in relation to the clients' needs and preferences, and standard 1.17(b) says social workers should take reasonable steps to avoid abandoning clients who are still in need of services.

The American Counseling Association's code runs the same track: standard A.11.d says counselors who transfer or refer clients ensure appropriate clinical and administrative processes are completed and open communication is maintained with both clients and practitioners, and standard A.12 says counselors do not abandon or neglect clients and help arrange continuation of treatment when necessary.

As of this guide's research, the ACA says its 2014 Code of Ethics remains the current version while a revision is under way.

APA Ethics Code standard 10.09 asks psychologists entering an employment relationship to make reasonable efforts to provide for orderly resolution of responsibility for client care if the employment ends, with paramount consideration given to the welfare of the client.

AAMFT standard 1.11 says marriage and family therapists do not abandon or neglect clients in treatment without reasonable arrangements for the continuation of treatment — the code in force is the revised version effective January 1, 2015.

And BACB Ethics Code standard 3.16, applicable to all BCBA and BCaBA applicants and certificants since January 1, 2022, requires behavior analysts to spell out client-transition circumstances in their service agreement and provide a written transition plan with target dates, activities and responsible parties.

Read together, these standards describe the clinician your clause will be applied to: one whose professional obligations at departure run toward disclosure and continuity.

The codes bind the clinician's conduct rather than your contract, and enforceability of the clause itself is decided under state law — but language that reads as a gag order sits badly next to all of them.

The ethics frame cuts both ways, and the poaching half is yours.

ACA standard C.3.d says counselors do not use their places of employment or institutional affiliation to recruit clients for their private practices — so a counselor who works your caseload to build a side practice has an ethics problem that exists independently of anything your contract says.

An employee non-solicit targets the second loss a departure creates: a departing clinician recruiting your other clinicians, BCBAs, RBTs or front-office staff to a competing employer.

The rules here are not copies of the client-side rules, which is why the two clauses should be drafted and evaluated separately.

Illinois puts an income floor under non-solicits: they are barred for employees earning $45,000 a year or less, rising to $47,500 on January 1, 2027.

Illinois also voids non-competes and non-solicits unless the employer advises the employee in writing to consult a lawyer and gives at least 14 calendar days to review.

Minnesota's non-compete ban, by contrast, expressly leaves non-solicitation agreements outside it.

California is where employee non-solicits need the most care.

In AMN Healthcare, Inc. v. Aya Healthcare Services, Inc. (2018), a California Court of Appeal held a one-year clause barring former recruiters from soliciting their former employer's employees void under B&P Code 16600, because it restrained the recruiters from practicing their profession of recruiting travel nurses.

Read that for what it is: one appellate ruling about employees whose profession was recruiting, not a holding that every employee non-solicit fails in California.

The earlier Edwards v. Arthur Andersen decision, from the California Supreme Court, had expressly left the validity of an employee non-recruitment clause undecided.

The practical read: an employee non-solicit is worth having where your state allows one, but the case law on it is the least settled of the two — the research behind this guide did not cover California appellate decisions after AMN — so have employment counsel in your state review it before it goes into every offer.

The same clause changes character at the state line, and legislatures have started naming behavioral health licenses directly — Montana's statute lists them by name, and Illinois' veterans-and-first-responders rule turns on named licensing acts.

The table below is what the research behind this guide verified in primary sources — where to start, not a substitute for a read of your own state's law with employment counsel.

A state missing from the table has not been given a clean bill of health — the research behind this guide verified these states' rules in primary sources, and absence here is not a finding that anything goes.

Confirm the current law in each state you employ in before you standardize a template.

Bar solicitation, not service.

Write the clause around active solicitation — outreach aimed at the clients on your caseload — and resist the urge to also bar a clinician from serving a former client who calls them unprompted.

Washington's statute draws that line for you: from June 30, 2027, an agreement that directly or indirectly prohibits accepting or transacting business with a customer counts as a noncompetition covenant there, and a no-accept clause is void from that date.

A service ban also collides with the client-choice reality described above.

Scope by relationship, not by job title.

Virginia's statute shows the shape: customer non-solicits there are limited to customers the professional had material contact with.

Building your client clause around the clients the clinician actually served — and your staff clause around people they actually worked with or supervised — keeps the restraint matched to the interest you are protecting.

Keep the term inside your state's limits.

Where a statute imposes them — South Dakota requires a patient or client non-solicit to comply with the geographic and temporal limits of SDCL 53-9-11 — your clause has to meet those limits.

The research behind this guide found no national norm for how long a non-solicit should run, so treat duration as a state-law question rather than copying another practice's number.

Give people time to read it.

Illinois voids non-competes and non-solicits unless the employer advises the employee in writing to consult a lawyer and provides at least 14 calendar days to review.

Whatever your state requires, handing the clause over at offer stage rather than in the day-one paperwork avoids the signature fight and presents the term as what it should be: a condition of the role, disclosed early.

Pair the clause with a transition procedure, and lock the list down.

A written client-transition step gives every departure a script — the transition plan BACB standard 3.16 already requires of behavior analysts is a workable model.

Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, a client list is a trade secret only where the owner took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it derives independent economic value from not being generally known, so access controls and documentation are what make that argument available.

Even then, a Defend Trade Secrets Act injunction cannot prevent a person from entering an employment relationship — conditions on employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on the information the person knows.

Last, have employment counsel in your state read the final language.

The rules above come from state statutes and court decisions; how they apply to your template is legal judgment, and this page is general employer information rather than legal advice.

Treat the departure as two problems on two clocks: client care first, enforcement second.

Run the handoff before anything else.

Notify clients promptly and seek transfer, referral or continuation of services in relation to their needs and preferences, and when a clinician is leaving your employment, make sure clients hear the options for continuing services and the benefits and risks of each.

Complete the clinical and administrative handoffs and keep communication open between the client and the next provider, and do not let a coverage gap turn into abandonment — the non-abandonment standards in the NASW, ACA and AAMFT codes bind your licensees regardless of what the contract says.

Enforce the right thing.

Under a clause that bars active solicitation — the kind the drafting section above tells you to write — a client who calls the departing clinician on their own has not been solicited; a clause that defines solicitation broadly, as the California agreement in Edwards did, would read the same call differently.

Pursuing the clinician over that call reads exactly as badly as it is.

The clause earns its keep on the opposite fact pattern: a caseload worked by text message the week after notice.

Document what actually happened — which clients, contacted how, from what device — before you involve counsel.

Two state rules speak directly to this moment.

Since May 6, 2026, Utah has voided non-solicitation agreements that prevent a healthcare worker from telling a patient where they currently work or will work, and Maine's 2026 law requires any enforceable non-compete with a health care practitioner to recognize the individual's right to choose their own practitioner.

Both point the same direction: the choice belongs to the client.

Then backfill.

The caseload does not wait for a hire, and the coverage you arrange during notice is temporary.

When you are ready to replace the clinician, the behavioral health hiring hub collects the role guides, screening and pay resources for the rest of the build-out.