Switch from Medicine to Law Forum

[A. Nony Mouse]

I get that. I agree that the OP doesn’t really know that law would be better, I just disagree that he should feel better about medicine because he’ll make more money than in law. And he wasn’t really saying that people should go into law, just that they shouldn’t go into medicine.

[PeanutsNJam]

Fair enough, not really interested in litigating the semantics of what a "decent amount of money" is. My point is he's in a position that a lot of working professionals (including myself) would love to be in. It gets real fucking old having the bust your ass to afford a tiny apartment in the city because you're going to be taking a huge paycut to move elsewhere.

Also, OP's love of the law is based on basically not knowing anything about what the actual practice of law is. This is a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. I'm not saying nobody should ever go to law school. I'm just saying it's silly for someone who goes to a top med school to daydream about what might have been if they had gone to law school instead.

Graduating from med school at around 26-28 with >300k debt and looking at a ~4 year residency being paid ~40k/year? Not to mention not actually wanting to be a doctor. I don't know how med school loans work and whether interest accrues during residency, but if it does, we're looking at close to 400k debt before we start earning enough to appreciably pay it off.

You realize not all doctors make the same amount of money, right? Your link points to some of the highest paid specialties in the field. Your blanket statement about how med school is way better than law school is just as silly as someone daydreaming about law school. Drooling at competitive specialties like dermatology or cardiac surgeon is as silly as drooling at biglaw partner jobs. Hate to break it to you, but doctors can't "lateral" into gastroenterology.

[AspiringAspirant]

Fair enough, not really interested in litigating the semantics of what a "decent amount of money" is. My point is he's in a position that a lot of working professionals (including myself) would love to be in. It gets real fucking old having the bust your ass to afford a tiny apartment in the city because you're going to be taking a huge paycut to move elsewhere.

Also, OP's love of the law is based on basically not knowing anything about what the actual practice of law is. This is a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. I'm not saying nobody should ever go to law school. I'm just saying it's silly for someone who goes to a top med school to daydream about what might have been if they had gone to law school instead.

Graduating from med school at around 26-28 with >300k debt and looking at a ~4 year residency being paid ~40k/year? Not to mention not actually wanting to be a doctor. I don't know how med school loans work and whether interest accrues during residency, but if it does, we're looking at close to 400k debt before we start earning enough to appreciably pay it off.

You realize not all doctors make the same amount of money, right? Your link points to some of the highest paid specialties in the field. Your blanket statement about how med school is way better than law school is just as silly as someone daydreaming about law school. Drooling at competitive specialties like dermatology or cardiac surgeon is as silly as drooling at biglaw partner jobs. Hate to break it to you, but doctors can't "lateral" into gastroenterology.

Yeah this guy strikes me as someone who hasn't actually spoken to many ppl in the medical field.

[mcmand]

Lol, I just stumbled across this thread via google searching and I realized I wrote this in 2013!

Not that anyone cares, but I wanted to provide a followup. I eventually decided to go to medical school and I am in my fourth year of medical school. I have already completed all the requirements for graduation, so I just have to show up and receive my M.D. degree! I ended up attending a fairly good medical school and I am in the process of interviewing for residency.

Long story short, I should have stuck with my gut from ages ago. Although I am finishing up medical school, I really hate medicine and severely regret that I did not pursue the law school path. Looking back on it, my pride got in the way of me pursuing my true passion. I didn't want to be perceived as a premed failure, so I stuck it out and I am about a few months away from being a Doctor.

To any college student who stumbles across this thread, I advise you to avoid medicine like the plaque. The VAST majority of medical students and physicians I know dislike medicine and would never advise someone to pursue this path.

You still shouldn't go to law school, even though you could at this point. Nothing you've said in 2013 or present day shows you wouldn't have had the same problem happen at law school graduation. You haven't worked in the field at all, you haven't talked to several lawyers across tons of practice areas to get a sense of what each do and what will be available to you, and you don't seem to be able to articulate why, other than wishing you studied political science. This is "grass is greener" without acknowledging that lawyers are just as unhappy as doctors and generally poorer to boot.

To any college student reading this thread, any graduate/professional program is expensive, has risks, and requires a genuine commitment based on reality and experience. Don't make a bad financial choice if your heart isn't in it and if you haven't researched it sufficiently. Medicine, law, pharmacy, PhD (any subject), etc.

Addendum: OP, go into consulting, or become a paid expert witness or something. Expert witnesses get paid a lot and you get to be in court. Don't be a doctor if you hate it. You'll be miserable, people working with you will be miserable from the bad energy you put out, and your patients will likely suffer. There are options post MD.

[dabigchina]

Fair enough, not really interested in litigating the semantics of what a "decent amount of money" is. My point is he's in a position that a lot of working professionals (including myself) would love to be in. It gets real fucking old having the bust your ass to afford a tiny apartment in the city because you're going to be taking a huge paycut to move elsewhere.

Also, OP's love of the law is based on basically not knowing anything about what the actual practice of law is. This is a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. I'm not saying nobody should ever go to law school. I'm just saying it's silly for someone who goes to a top med school to daydream about what might have been if they had gone to law school instead.

Graduating from med school at around 26-28 with >300k debt and looking at a ~4 year residency being paid ~40k/year? Not to mention not actually wanting to be a doctor. I don't know how med school loans work and whether interest accrues during residency, but if it does, we're looking at close to 400k debt before we start earning enough to appreciably pay it off.

You realize not all doctors make the same amount of money, right? Your link points to some of the highest paid specialties in the field. Your blanket statement about how med school is way better than law school is just as silly as someone daydreaming about law school. Drooling at competitive specialties like dermatology or cardiac surgeon is as silly as drooling at biglaw partner jobs. Hate to break it to you, but doctors can't "lateral" into gastroenterology.

Yeah this guy strikes me as someone who hasn't actually spoken to many ppl in the medical field.

I mean you realize all lawyers don't make the some amount of money either right?

You realize breaking into ROAD specialties is way easier than getting partnership right? There are 35,000 anesthesiologists alone in the US. I would be shocked if there were 35,000 biglaw partners.

But what do I know? I just have friends doing residencies in various specialties atm. I'm sure your completely baseless speculation about the state of the medical field is definitely more accurate than what they have told me.

eta: strong strawman argument.

Hate to break it to you, but doctors can't "lateral" into gastroenterology.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Collectively, the top 200 global firms have offices in 573 cities in 94 countries around the world. The US is, naturally, by far the largest jurisdiction for these firms, employing a total of 40,376 partners.

Plus lawyers don't have to be in biglaw to make money.

But really this focus on making money seems pretty myopic when the point is that the OP just plain hates medicine, and never said it was because of the pay or that they thought that law would make them more money. Job satisfaction isn't based only on pay. Like, the OP said they really regret going into medicine and said/implied they wish they'd gone into law instead. Coming back with "but medicine puts you in a way better financial position!" isn't really responsive to what the OP said.

[dabigchina]

Collectively, the top 200 global firms have offices in 573 cities in 94 countries around the world. The US is, naturally, by far the largest jurisdiction for these firms, employing a total of 40,376 partners.

Plus lawyers don't have to be in biglaw to make money.

But really this focus on making money seems pretty myopic when the point is that the OP just plain hates medicine, and never said it was because of the pay or that they thought that law would make them more money. Job satisfaction isn't based only on pay. Like, the OP said they really regret going into medicine and said/implied they wish they'd gone into law instead. Coming back with "but medicine puts you in a way better financial position!" isn't really responsive to what the OP said.

Right, but again, OP can't really say he would love to spend the rest of his days proofing documents or helping indigent defendants because he hasn't done any of it. He certainly can't say he likes it enough to forego potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars over his life.

To say that how much money a job pays you doesn't matter is naive in my opinion.

eta: Anesthesiology is just one specialty. There is a range of lucrative specialties. As an aside, there are 9,500 dermatologists and 34,000 radiologists in the US.

[UVA2B]

How often do we need to create false equivalence between professional fields before it’s objectively stupid? I’m willing to entertain it so long as we reach the end goal where Law/=medicine/=consulting, etc.

The OP smacks of grass is greener syndrome, but that doesn’t necessarily suggest the qualitative differences need to be parsed like we can decide, in a vacuum, whether the careers make more or less sense for an individual.

Or, alternatively, this was a necro deserving to die.

[dabigchina]

How often do we need to create false equivalence between professional fields before it’s objectively stupid? I’m willing to entertain it so long as we reach the end goal where Law/=medicine/=consulting, etc.

The OP smacks of grass is greener syndrome, but that doesn’t necessarily suggest the qualitative differences need to be parsed like we can decide, in a vacuum, whether the careers make more or less sense for an individual.

Or, alternatively, this was a necro deserving to die.

I agree. Frankly, my original post was kind of a throwaway meant to help OP get over their "grass is greener syndrome." I wasn't really expecting people to jump out of the woodwork and tell him medicine sucked.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Right, but again, OP can't really say he would love to spend the rest of his days proofing documents or helping indigent defendants because he hasn't done any of it. He certainly can't say he likes it enough to forego potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars over his life.

To say that how much money a job pays you doesn't matter is naive in my opinion.

eta: Anesthesiology is just one specialty. There is a range of lucrative specialties. As an aside, there are 9,500 dermatologists and 34,000 radiologists in the US.

Sure, of course he can't say he'd enjoy law. But the idea that he should stay in medicine when he hates it because it makes more money than law is just kind of nonresponsive - he should find out about other professions and go do one of those.

I'm also not saying that how much money a job pays doesn't matter - just that because a job pays the *most* money out of your possible options doesn't mean it's automatically your best option; you might find something you like better that pays less, but still well enough to be comfortable. Money's only one factor, not the only factor.

I guess I'm saying that I totally get your "grass is greener" argument but your solution seems to be that he should stay in medicine because it makes money, rather than that he should figure out what he actually *would* like. It's not either medicine OR law.

[jingosaur]

Can we just all agree that all professions suck and we're all going to die depressed and alone? This thread is stressing me out.