Veterinary Salary Negotiation: How to Get Paid What You're Worth

By Omar A. Lopez, Esq., Employment Attorney and General Counsel, Vet Candy

Omar A. Lopez is a licensed employment attorney in New Jersey and New York and serves as General Counsel for Vet Candy. He has advised veterinary professionals on compensation negotiations, offer evaluations, and employment disputes across both states. What follows is the conversation he wishes every veterinary professional had before they accepted their first job offer.

Most veterinary professionals are exceptional at advocating for their patients and genuinely uncomfortable advocating for themselves. That discomfort has a real dollar cost. Research on salary negotiation consistently shows that candidates who negotiate their initial offer earn significantly more over the course of their careers than those who accept the first number. Not because they are more talented. Because they asked.

This article covers three things: what your employer can and cannot legally ask you about your compensation history, how to approach the salary negotiation conversation strategically, and what the law says about pay equity and your right to discuss your salary with colleagues. All three of these topics affect your financial life as a veterinary professional and all three are areas where most DVMs are operating without the information they need.

What They Can and Cannot Ask You About Your Salary History

This is the area of employment law that has changed most significantly in the past decade and where the gap between what is legal and what employers routinely do anyway is widest.

A growing number of states and localities have enacted salary history ban laws that prohibit employers from asking candidates about their current or previous compensation during the hiring process. The states that have enacted these protections include New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, and others, with more being added regularly. New York City has one of the strongest versions of this law in the country. If you are interviewing for a position in any of these jurisdictions, an employer is generally prohibited from asking what you currently earn or what you earned at your last job.

Why does this matter? Because your current salary, if disclosed, becomes the anchor for your negotiation. If you are currently underpaid, as many veterinary professionals are relative to the market value their skills represent, disclosing your current salary gives the employer the information they need to make you an offer that is marginally better than what you already have rather than one that reflects your actual market value. Salary history bans exist specifically to disrupt this cycle, which has historically kept compensation suppressed for professionals who entered the market at below-market rates and never fully recovered.

If you are in a jurisdiction with a salary history ban and an employer asks what you currently make, you are legally protected in declining to answer. You can say something direct and professional: I understand that in New York, salary history is not something I am required to share, and I would prefer to discuss the compensation this role offers based on my qualifications and the market. That response is legally accurate, professionally appropriate, and signals that you know your rights.

If you are in a jurisdiction without a salary history ban, you have less legal protection but you still have negotiating leverage. You are not required to answer a question just because it is asked. You can redirect: I am keeping my salary history confidential, but I am happy to discuss what I am looking for in this role based on my experience and the market for this position. Most employers will accept that redirect. The ones who push back aggressively are giving you useful information about how they negotiate other things.

What Employers Are Required to Tell You

The trend in employment law is moving toward requiring employers to disclose salary ranges rather than asking candidates to disclose their history. Colorado, New York, California, Washington, and a growing list of states now require employers to include salary ranges in job postings or to provide them upon request. If you are interviewing in one of these states and the job posting does not include a salary range, you can ask for one and in many jurisdictions the employer is legally required to provide it.

This matters because it shifts the information asymmetry of the negotiation. When you know the range the employer has budgeted for the role, you can anchor your ask at the top of that range rather than in the middle of it, which is where most candidates anchor instinctively because they are afraid of asking for too much.

How to Negotiate: The Strategy

Know your number before you walk in. Your target salary should be based on three data points: the AVMA compensation survey for your specialty and geographic market, the salary ranges published in job postings for comparable roles in your area, and what your colleagues are earning if you have access to that information. Combining these gives you a defensible market rate that you can reference in the negotiation.

Always let the employer name a number first if you can. Once you have named a number, you can only negotiate downward from it. Once they have named a number, you have the option to negotiate upward. If they ask what you are looking for before they have given you any information about the range, you can respond: I would love to hear what the budgeted range is for this role so I can tell you whether it aligns with what I am looking for. That is not evasive. It is strategically sound.

When you counter, anchor high within a reasonable range. If the budgeted range is $100,000 to $120,000 and you want $115,000, start at $120,000. You are not being greedy. You are creating negotiating room. The employer will likely come back somewhere between your ask and their initial offer, which is exactly where you wanted to land.

Never negotiate against yourself. If an employer comes back and says we cannot do $120,000, do not immediately offer to reduce your ask. Ask a question first. Something like: can you help me understand what flexibility there is in the range? Or: what would it take to get to $118,000? Make them work for every dollar they take off the table. Silence is your friend in these moments. State your position and then stop talking.

When salary is genuinely fixed, negotiate everything else. Some practices, particularly corporate groups with standardized pay scales, will tell you honestly that the base salary is not negotiable. If that is true, the conversation is not over. Ask about the signing bonus. Ask about the CE budget. Ask about additional paid time off. Ask about a performance review at six months with a salary adjustment built in. Ask about student loan repayment assistance. Ask about the production pay threshold and whether it is adjustable. Each of these has real financial value and most candidates never ask about any of them.

Get everything in writing. Verbal commitments made during a salary negotiation are not enforceable if they do not appear in the written offer or the employment agreement. If your employer tells you that you will be eligible for a raise after six months, that commitment belongs in the contract. If they tell you the production threshold is negotiable, get the revised terms in the offer letter. Friendly verbal assurances from hiring managers who are no longer at the practice in eighteen months are worth nothing when you need to enforce them.

Your Right to Discuss Salary with Colleagues

This is the most commonly misunderstood area of employment law among veterinary professionals, and the misunderstanding almost always benefits employers at the expense of employees.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, most private sector employees in the United States have the legal right to discuss their wages, hours, and working conditions with their colleagues. This right exists regardless of what your employee handbook says. An employer who tells you that discussing your salary with coworkers is prohibited and grounds for discipline is in most cases telling you something that is not legally enforceable. Policies that prohibit salary discussions among employees generally violate the NLRA and cannot be enforced against most private sector workers.

There are exceptions. Supervisors, managers, and certain categories of employees who have access to confidential HR information as part of their job duties may have more limited rights in this area. But for the vast majority of associate veterinarians, the prohibition on salary discussion that appears in many employee handbooks is either unenforceable or significantly overstated.

Why does salary transparency matter? Because pay equity depends on it. Veterinary medicine has documented gender and racial pay gaps. The profession cannot close those gaps if the people being underpaid are legally afraid to find out they are being underpaid. If a colleague wants to share what they earn and you want to share what you earn, you are generally protected in having that conversation. Know your rights.

The Negotiation Conversation: What It Actually Sounds Like

Most veterinary professionals avoid negotiating because they do not know what to say and they are afraid of damaging the relationship before it starts. Here are the words for three common scenarios.

When you receive an offer below your target: Thank you so much for the offer. I am genuinely excited about this opportunity and I want to make this work. Based on my experience and the market data I have looked at for this region, I was hoping we could get closer to X. Is there flexibility there?

When they come back below your ask but above their initial offer: I appreciate you working on this. I want to accept and I want to make sure we land somewhere that sets this relationship up well. Can we meet in the middle at X?

When salary is fixed and you are shifting to other terms: I understand the base is set. Can we talk about a signing bonus to bridge the gap? And I want to make sure I understand the full benefits package, specifically the CE budget, the PLIT coverage, and whether there is any student loan repayment support.

One Last Thing

Negotiating your salary is not aggression. It is not ingratitude. It is not a signal that you are difficult to work with. It is the professional exercise of information and leverage that every employer expects and that most employers respect. The practice that rescinds an offer because a candidate negotiated politely and professionally was not a practice you wanted to work for anyway.

You advocated through eight years of school to become a veterinarian. Spend five minutes advocating for yourself in the salary conversation. The compounding effect of that five minutes will follow you for the rest of your career.

Omar A. Lopez, Esq. is a licensed employment attorney in New Jersey and New York and serves as General Counsel for Vet Candy. Veterinary professionals with questions about offer evaluation, salary negotiation strategy, or employment law matters can reach out through myvetcandy.com. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship.