Law v. Other Professions Forum

[KatyMarie]

^ thanks for that it was a good read.

+1 Great read. Thanks pketpket!

[lecsa]

MY husband is a medical doctor currently finishing up residency in emergency, which is a specialty, and he works way more than 70 hours. Only 70 hours is a total joke. They are limited to working residents to 160 hours in a two week period with NO sick days and only two weeks of vacation that are schedule 12 months in advance one week in Fall and one week in Spring. Also they almost always schedule it so you work an overnight the day before vacation and the last day so it is really more like 5 days off. What happens when you do get sick is that you end up working two shifts for every one you miss trading with your buddy to cover your butt. No holidays of course. My Husband was gone Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter. Also he has to touch people which to me is just gross. So yeah doctors get paid $$$ after, but they have to deal with people at their absolute worst, and work crazy weird hours and crazy high amounts of hours. Right now he is in residency and we make the exact same $ but I have a BS in Engineering.

So per hour he is getting like minimum wage. Also I didn't mention the scam of "report-able" hours. You see they schedule these residents to work six days a week for 10 hours with 12 hours on weekends. What they don't record is getting there an hour early to get briefed and then staying at least an hour late to chart the patients for the next doc to come on shift. Also they still have to go to "symposium" and work on projects where they make complex presentations all off the clock. Also you get bossed around my nurses with less education but get paid more. So no, becoming a physician is +++ way hard and only for those that absolutely are dead set at actually being physicians or working in a related capacity with consulting or research. My husband could have chosen dentistry, been paid as much or more and had easy hours. Therefore love of the profession is a key component for ANY career choice. I think medical students research really well going into it what do expect whereas law kids do not.

Residency might suck but life gets a lot better for doctors after residency unless you're a surgeon. Plus with better hours comes increased pay post-residency.

Lawyers, on the other hand, often don't get paid as much as they do in biglaw after biglaw. And with any cut in hours comes a cut in pay. It seems like doctors just end up making more money after residency even though they work a lot less. Plus even the ones in the lowest rated and least competitive practices (family medicine, IM, pediatricians, psych) work 40 hour weeks with low six figure pay. If you're looking at 40 hour weeks in law, you're probably getting paid five figures. I'm not saying that residents don't work hard - but that's not typical of a medical career since residency only lasts a few years. Of course certain specialties (like surgery, esp. trauma surgery) require a lot of hours, forever, but they also rake in high six figures/millions per year.

Of course, medicine is also probably similar boring and about as mentally stimulating as law (which is not at all) since a lot of medicine requires just pure memorization and regurgitation and very little critical thinking or creativity. But medicine in general is a lot more stable than law, the financial reward is probably higher, and you end up working less for more money the longer your career.

If you really want the ultimate win-win job (lifestyle and money), dentistry, agreed with you, is probably the way to go except for the fact that a lot of dental programs cost $400k and you may have to buy your own practice.