Is a doctor, lawyer or dentist permitted to take a list of his or her former clients with them to the office of the employer’s computer?

The law takes a different approach, however, in the case of professionals such as doctors, lawyers or dentists. A departing lawyer or other professional is permitted to take, even to download, a list of the clients he has personally worked with in order to contact them and offer them the three choices discussed above. Some examples: • Lodwig v. Mather, [1995] A.J. No. 382 – the court found that a departing dentist has the right to print off a list of patients from the employer’s computer in order to identify and contact the patients he personally treated. Picard J. said this: “A dentist who practises as an associate or even as an employee of another dentist, has the right to have access to or retain the names of the patients with whom he or she has had an exclusive or primary dentist-patient relationship and to advise those patients of the change of location of his or her practice.” • Goodman v. Newman, supra – the court found that a departing dentist who took with him a list of the five or six hundred patients that he had personally treated did not breach any duties of confidentiality. The client list was not confidential information. • Cressman, supra – the court concluded that downloading a list of patients who the departing optometrist was scheduled to see over the next two months, contacting them and telling them about her departure and then giving them a choice of staying with her or with the old practice was something the optometrist “had both a right and a duty to do.”