Lawyer Vs Doctor

The lawyer knows that statutes change, that the law is something which legislatures can amend; yet the body of the law stands there immovable, in part — where, as with us, the Common Law prevails — a mere mass of precedent which he is to accept, expound, and apply. The professional mind in the presence of such a task works not unlike that of the priest who would apply and expound and defend against misconstruction a body of revealed truth. And especially is the mind in the two professions tempted to a like observance of all minutiæ of procedure. As the ritualist resents innovation in his ceremonial, resents the estimate of his rites by mere reason and utility, so the lawyer shows toward his legal rites an attachment which brings wonder and solemnity to laymen. Habituated to these rites, as he is, they have become to him inseparable from the end for which they exist. He ministers in the Temple of Justice, and ancient piety long deadened into custom keeps him from seeing that to his divinity the new moons and offerings are an abomination until there comes into them again some regard to the widow and the fatherless.

Lawyer and Physician: A Contrast

EVERY lawyer when young should be apprenticed to some good physician, and should return to him regularly through life. Then we might hope that from the neighboring profession of healing there might enter into him a spirit never to be wholly quenched by all the deadening influences of his work.

No fact could well be more surprising or offer a more delicate psychological problem than this, that, within two professions touching life upon matters of equal importance, professions of ancient dignity and learning, and inviting to their service men of equal and rare ability, there should in the same community be so different a spirit.

Medicine stands in this strange contrast to law, that while the public is clamoring for the lawyers to advance, the lawyers themselves as a class offer the chief resistance; the medical profession constantly outstrips and leads the public imagination in devices to check disease. Although much at the start was due to laymen, the campaign against tuberculosis, against infant mortality, against malarial and typhoid fevers, is largely captained and manned by doctors, who have the hearty support of the profession as a whole. The public does not have to drive and drag them from their satisfaction with methods which even to the laity are clearly antiquated and perverse. The doctors, unlike the lawyers, have rather to contend with public efforts to hold them back. Powerful lobbies and massmeetings have been known to oppose the doctors’ most reasonable efforts to refuse the license to the vicious and untrained. And many a powerful newspaper, despite well-known medical ethics, publishes advertisements upon whose face are all the signs of a debasing and often criminal quackery. Yet the impulse of the profession, as a whole, is sufficiently strong to insure a remarkable progress in the face, not only of its own inner enemies, but of this indifference and opposition from without. Of two Rip Van Winkles awakening to-day, the physician would find his old methods as rust-eaten and useless as his instruments; the lawyer, after a few hours with new statutes, would feel at home in any of our courts.

In comparing the lawyers with the physicians one should not lose sight of the vices in medicine, — its tendency to sects, its quackery, its blunders in diagnosis and in treatment, the readiness of some physicians to become accessory to forms of sexual evil, its disgracefully inadequate ‘colleges’ in many parts of our country. Nor should we lose sight of the prevalent personal honor of lawyers, — which is fully as great, in all likelihood, as that of physicians, — and the inestimable service rendered the public, not only in the lawyers’ direct professional work, but also when, as individuals, they labor outside the strict lines of their profession. As legislators and high executive officials, federal and slate, the lawyers almost alone govern us, and we prosper. To men of the type of Baldwin, Root, Hughes, and Taft, our society is in deepest debt. Yet the lawyers as a body, in the strict, work of their profession, — and it is of the pervading spirit only that I speak, — face opposite to the men of medicine. As judges, counsel, advocates, they are of the backward look. Their inertia here becomes almost our despair.

The parallel in medicine to the legal spirit lies in the distant past before that movement which, led by men like Harvey, Sydenham, and Locke, called modern medicine into life; at a time when the medical profession had finality of tone, looking back to Galen as to the completion of its work. In the ways of the lawyer one fancies one sees the Middle Ages present in the flesh. In Europe the past is most evident in the Church and the office of the Ruler. With us, these seem swept and garnished, while in our courts is ancient dust and formalism. One finds here — not in some hole and corner of the profession, but in its high and open places — a willingness to look at words rather than at substance. It may be the exception, but it is no rare exception, here to have great issues hang upon a turn of phrasing, where the meaning admits no doubt. A, who has proved that B has defrauded him of money, is nevertheless refused redress because a supreme court is not sure but that ‘his money,’ of which A complains that he has been defrauded, may mean the money of B. An action for murder comes to naught because the complaint fails to state that John Smith slain was a human being. 1

Such solemn examining of p’s to see whether one of them may not be written q; of every i lest one may lack its dot,—all this seems to the layman little better than deciding affairs of state by the look of entrails or by the behavior within the sacred hencoop. The Court of Appeals of New York nullifying legislative acts directed to the relief of workingmen, — nullifying them because, it was held, they violated the constitutional guarantee regarding ‘ due process of law,’ — reveals a power to think across empty spaces, which would have been hailed as modern and envied in those mediæval schools where stout realities were affirmed or denied because of their supposed relation to distant ideas like ‘quiddities’ and ‘intentions.’

Formalism thus run mad would be an anomaly in any part of our modern Occident. It is trebly strange in the most western of all peoples, in a nation careless of method, having an eye to results. Our medical profession would rush the cup of cold water to the sufferer by help of telephone and taxicab. Our legal profession would get it to him in the right way if it takes all summer. The difference in the temper of the two bodies is at once so strange and so important practically, that we must no longer delay our search for its source and origin.

II

There is a kinship, which few can have failed to notice, between the Lawyer and the Priest. While the priest has at times been physician, — as with the Egyptian, the Hindu, and the mediæval European, as well as with the savage, — yet the connection is more intimate and stubborn between jurist and ecclesiastic. Civil and canon law, closely joined at one time in Europe, have often been quite confused, as in ancient Palestine. At the dinner where Jesus denounced the Pharisees because they tithed mint and cummin and forgot judgment and the love of God, a lawyer present declared, amazed, that this attack on the Pharisees touched his, the great legal profession. Jesus accepted his challenge, in stinging words that some of the laity to-day would like to see carved on buildings where lawyers congregate: ‘ Woe unto you lawyers also! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.’ And then he described legal and ecclesiastical conservatism so that none need think it peculiar to any land or age. The lawyers, Jesus said, were always ready to stone the prophet, stone him who proclaimed the dawn of a new day; but when ancient dust had claimed the man, the profession would erect to him a costly monument; the lawyers had no intercourse with living truth, they kept from men the key of knowledge.

The lawyer knows that statutes change, that the law is something which legislatures can amend; yet the body of the law stands there immovable, in part — where, as with us, the Common Law prevails — a mere mass of precedent which he is to accept, expound, and apply. The professional mind in the presence of such a task works not unlike that of the priest who would apply and expound and defend against misconstruction a body of revealed truth. And especially is the mind in the two professions tempted to a like observance of all minutiæ of procedure. As the ritualist resents innovation in his ceremonial, resents the estimate of his rites by mere reason and utility, so the lawyer shows toward his legal rites an attachment which brings wonder and solemnity to laymen. Habituated to these rites, as he is, they have become to him inseparable from the end for which they exist. He ministers in the Temple of Justice, and ancient piety long deadened into custom keeps him from seeing that to his divinity the new moons and offerings are an abomination until there comes into them again some regard to the widow and the fatherless.

For all the difference in their work, the jurist and the ecclesiastic are thus schooled in like modes of thought. When Huxley went forth in the name of Darwin to smite the embattled bishops, the fray was not so different, however it may have differed in magnitude and in genius of leadership, from that which now, as at all times, society must wage against its lawyers. There is in both cases an effort to modernize, to force living thought into the body; an effort met by immense inertia, not to speak of active resistance.

The conservatism of the lawyer comes thus in part from the contagion of the law. For the law represents the stability, the habit, of our social life, as against creative, reformatory energy. So we must not deny the value of his trait. His is the virtue — and the vice — that lies in habit. Here, as with each of us personally, habit is indispensable, even though it call forth no enthusiasm. Though it does not drive us forward, and too often binds, yet we should not advance without it, for the gain once made would slip away.

III

A further cause for the lawyers’ temper is found in those influences almost inseparable from every establishment.

We have no established religion; we have no established school of medicine. We have, however, an established Law Court, with its vast body of ministrants. In a country until recently jealous of governmental action, and where all possible things were left to private initiative, we have wisely refrained from intrusting to personal enterprise the organization and support of courts. Thus we have in the case of law an establishment; and, further, an establishment without rival.

The Church of England, the Lutheran Church in Prussia, must brook competitors. The organization maintained by government is constantly measured and spurred on by the work and spirit of dissenters. The nonconformist, eager and critical, is a gadfly that will not let the stately body sleep. Even the school system, which is the only other establishment in the United States, — unless we were to include manufacture, which, under our tariff laws, is, too, in a measure established, — the public school sees its own handiwork and economy set by the side of private enterprise. The public high schools must compare their outcome with that of the great private academies; the universities of California, Wisconsin, Michigan must justify themselves before rivals like Harvard, Chicago, Stanford. But Law lacks all such spur of rivalry. We cannot choose whether we shall bring our complaint before a government court or before some college of judges erected by a Carnegie or a Rockefeller, with its corps of assistants to obtain evidence and support the verdict. We thus lack opportunity to demonstrate how much better the work might be done. The establishment, consequently, subjected only to wordy criticism, drones on its ancient way. It suffers the fate of any organism that is never called to energetic struggle. This in addition to all the pride and deadening satisfaction which is the inner foe of every establishment.

IV

Yet we must also look to some cause which we do not share with others. For our American legal profession, in its attachment to form at the cost of substance, outdoes the British, being more conservative, less pliable. Our criminal trials are notoriously more cumbrous. And while, as Judge Baldwin tells us, the prosecution of a criminal is more certain to occur with us than with the English, because undertaken at the public expense, yet this gleam cheers faintly since we know how far less often we convict; and even when there is conviction, how prevalent is the abuse of appeal. The selection of our juries is viewed with wonder from across the water. The English judge is a more active director of the trial, checking the advocate, brushing aside obstructions, driving at the truth. We began to reform our procedure earlier than did the English, but the effort soon spent its force.

This heightened archaism of our legal system arises in a large measure from early dread. Fearing the official oppressor, we have doggedly maintained and even strengthened all that ancient mechanism of law which seemed to promise a defense of the individual against governmental power. Thus we have fortified the court in order to check the other powers of government. But we have put our hand upon the judge by having him, in most of our states, chosen by popular vote. And when elected he often listens, as one bereft of wit and power, to the devices of the other officials, the advocates, of his court ; he acts in constant fear of the error into which the court’s own officials are trying to entrap him; his decisions are subject to almost endless review by other courts. And the jury, as a further check, and as representative of the plain and unofficial people, has been elevated and its selection refined to technical infinity.

Thus the popular dread of the strong official arm — until, of late years, we have come to know the full strength of the private and corporate arm — is responsible for some of the very anachronisms of which we complain. The inbred conservatism of the lawyer has with us been reinforced by the doubts and cautions of our people themselves.

V

To these inducements toward conservatism should be added still another. Almost all our lawyers pass through the school of advocacy. And advocacy in its present form is as though planned to take from the jurist whatever rounded view he may have had of his larger social duty, his responsibility to the man who is not his client. In theory the attorney is an officer of the court: his first duty is to the court and to society. In practice he is, in most cases, hired by an individual to serve that individual’s need. Too often he thus becomes in effect a mercenary, ready to fight on eit her side, careless of all larger issues. He becomes habituated to shift ing from himself the higher forms of obligation. Better that he win an unjust victory, many a lawyer has told me, than that he should not maintain to the utmost the side he has espoused. Not he, but the system and those who frame the system and the laws, are accountable for the outcome. His work is that of a wheel in a mechanism; to win cases when he can, and to leave to others so to check his effort that he shall not win unless the weight of law be with him.

Great men like Lincoln, and many men less great, cannot so view their work; they cannot feel themselves released from their responsibility. But the rank and file of the profession lose themselves in the ancient sophism. They repeat to themselves the high theory of advocacy and of its power for justice — a theory based utterly on fiction, and incapable of working justly unless the opposing advocates were always of equal talent. The plain lawyer, shutting his mind to the larger consequences of his acts, loses vision, and the profession becomes mechanical, dehumanized. The man of law who says, ‘My concern is not with justice, it is with the winning of cases,’ has more temptation and excuse, but his position is otherwise not unlike that of a physician who should say, ‘ My duty ends with the man who pays the fee. If a neighbor would not suffer from the infectious substance which I remove, let him and his own hired doctor look to that.’

Advocacy sharpens intellect at the expense of character. It is almost the worst of schools. It trains to ingenuity and concealment. Hourly the man is engaged in a work whose success depends to some extent upon a warped judgment; upon seeing both sides in some degree, but in confining his convictions, if possible, to the one side. If he can bring himself to believe in the partial, the strength of his appeal then has the strength of ten. Advocacy calls from the buried depths of the mind the unsympathetic, the contentious, powers — for which the public interest has some place, but a place daily lessening. There is thus a certain inducement to relax the social bond, to view the particular rather than the general good. And consequently devotion to the common interest, which is so important for advance, here meets a serious check. Paid advocacy thus joins with those other inducements which I have named to account for the lawyers’ and the law’s delay.

VI

The readier response, the leadership, which the medical profession shows, is not merely apparent and due to the lagging of the lawyers. There are special conditions favorable to free movement.

And first of these is the dependence of medicine upon natural science, from whose advance some motion must inevitably be caught. The knowledge of the bodily life and of its disturbances has been steadily increasing since the revival of learning. Discoveries like that of Harvey have been encouraged and supplemented by instrumental invention. The microscope, the stethoscope, the clinical thermometer, the centrifuge, the radiograph, have each given an added impetus to medical studies, and have helped to bind medicine closer to science by making the judgment of the physician surer and more exact; while the various products of germ-culture, coming as they have with many chemical discoveries, have put into the hands of the physician means like those which surgery has found in its great discoveries of anaesthesia and of the methods of antisepsis and asepsis. The men of medicine have thus come to look daily for some new light; there has grown in them a habit of expectancy and of putting to instant use the fresh offerings of science and of technical invention. They have, during the later centuries, and especially during the later decades, been so frequently given the effective means of advance, that advance has become the second nature of the profession. The alliance of medicine with natural science is thus close and inevitable. And to the scientific progress of the age we must attribute much of the alertness that is so signally present among the doctors.

A second cause of the physicians’ spirit of progress, in contrast with the conservatism of the bar, is that the immediate end and object of medicine is not in conflict with other great social ends. The doctor does not need to heal one man at the cost of health to another. The lawyer, in extending the boundary of one man’s right, too often must contract another’s. His is a work of adjusting claims in conflict. Whatever he does affects the interests of other men and is scrutinized and resisted by them. The individual lawyer is not free to put into operation some entirely new principle whose value he may perceive; he is not free to experiment effectively, as is the scientist and the physician. The counselor must fit his judgment into the usages of his society. The advocate is met and checked by the opposing advocate and by the judge. And the judge’s judgment, in turn, must be approved by other judges. Not until he sits upon the supreme bench may the judge be freely inventive and independent, and even then he has his fellow judges; and he has reached this eminence only after a schooling and a drill that should forever quiet all love of the fresh and creative.

The doctor, too, works within a system; he, too, must consult and is held in check at many points by public and professional habits of thought. But he is, after all, infinitely freer to prescribe and to operate, infinitely freer to attempt some promising uncertainty, to accept and apply some daring scientific assurance. His work is relatively personal, and admits of his flashing forth that spark of creative genius which is in each human being. The lawyer’s work is social and collective and methodically organized, and cannot be remodeled by every eager mind. The very eagerness of the mind is thus damped and discouraged, and finally forever killed.

The work of the medical profession thus offers a graver responsibility because offering more freedom to the individual practitioner; while with the lawyer individual responsibility — although present in many ways, in that a betrayal or a mistaken judgment may bring ruin to others — is limited by the very limits of his freedom; he must merely apply principles in whose making or discovery he can, as he keeps to his immediate work, have but the slightest part.

Medicine, traditionally less honorable than law, and less closely knit into social and governmental institutions, thus is far freer of limb.

VII

If my account is right, the responsibility for this inconvenient contrast rests with the laity as well as with the profession. Each side must be brought to see wherein it can help to make the work more responsive to refreshed ideas. Yet the leadership in such a movement must come from the profession itself. For the lawyers alone can fully understand their system, purge it, amputate if need be. The laity can only hold up to them a glass, tell them how sick and sluggish their system is, how much they need the physician. In this way the laity can at least aim to disturb their complacency, to make them constantly aware of the great distance between their accomplishment and what society maintains them for and rightly expects. The legal profession knows, yet it needs daily to be told, that it is not here for its own sake nor merely for the law. As the physician is to keep his eye fixed upon health and not upon some mere system of medicine, so the lawyer, looking beyond law, must recognize in himself a minister of justice, to live and grow with the growth of that great ideal.

The principle of justice is not like a Platonic idea, eternally changeless; it is a living energy in the mind, expressing itself in changing form, as does the idea of beauty. The lawyer, too attentive to mere law, — a chalky deposit of this living force, — catches the fixity, the definiteness, and loses sight of the vitality of justice. He should know its formal utterance in the past; but he should be ready day by day to bring it to a more perfect expression.

Sir Thomas More, while giving physicians high honor in his Utopia, would admit no lawyers. We need not go so far. A kindly and penetrating autocrat in our country would merely abolish their graver abuses. He would watch the doctors at their work, notice in their ways something more urbane, more spiritualized than is found among the men of law. To his imagination the law court and the hospital would reveal a common purpose — to care for disorder, to hear and answer complaint. But how different is the manner of the surgeons with their attendant nurses intent upon their operation, from that of the lawyers and their clerks at their task of removing from the human system some festering wrong! The expense of time, the burdening preliminaries, the gathering dust and smoke, the variety of finesse, perhaps even of outrageous imputation or open insult — one wonders how a great profession can tolerate such methods for a day. They smack of varnished pugilism rather than of an intelligent desire to apply to human misery the spiritual, indeed divine, idea of justice. There in the surgery, the white-gowned doctors and the nurses, dealing with a problem distinctly physical, seem to represent and symbolize the refinement, the intelligence, the silent mastery, the perfect coöperation, which lies at the heart of all that is truly civilized.

Our autocrat, noticing this, would compel his lawyers secretly to watch the group; and those in whom, after long watching, no spirit of emulation was awakened he would take from the law and set to other tasks.

1. This is taken from an actual judgment, not very long ago, by the California Supreme Court. See 137 California, 590. – THE AUTHOR. ↩

Lawyer Vs Doctor: Who Has The Better Lifestyle?

Two of the most widely-respected and seemingly prestigious occupations are lawyer and doctor. However, which one to choose? And when it comes to lifestyle; is there a clear winner?

This article aims to take a look at the popular debate, break down the differences between the two jobs and hopefully help guide those undecided on either of these careers.

First, here’s a quick answer…

Doctor Vs Lawyer: What’s Better?

There is no right answer for which is the better career; lawyer vs doctor. Both occupations are equally difficult and have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Doctors have higher earnings on average, but lawyers reach a higher earning capacity faster (training for fewer years). For most individuals, the choice between the two comes down to personal interests and academic strengths.

Let’s take a closer look at both professions, and answer all the common questions that get asked in any debate comparing the two.

Is It Easier to Become A Lawyer or A Doctor?

Studying to become a lawyer takes less time than it does to become a doctor. If we answer which profession is “easiest” by that benchmark alone, then becoming a lawyer wins.

Lawyers typically require four years of undergraduate education followed by 3 years of graduate law school. Note: this is excluding the additional time required to study for the law school admission test, which can often take several months, especially without the help of an LSAT prep course.

The process looks like this:

• Acquire an undergraduate degree (4 years)
• Write and Pass Law School Admission Test (LSAT)
• Acquire Juris Doctor Law Degree (3 years)
• Write and Pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE)
• Write and Pass Bar Exam

Common undergraduate degrees undertaken before law school include; pre-law, criminal justice, philosophy, history, business, economics, and political science.

After graduation, lawyers must pass the bar examination in order to receive a license to practice. Usually, this takes 2-3 months of study.

Doctors, on the other hand, have a longer route to the top of their profession.

Like lawyers, they need four years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, and then residency training (typically between 3-6 years) before they become certified specialists.

That’s a possible total of 14 years before full certification.

Medical school is also more difficult to get accepted to. Compared to the median law school acceptance rate of 40 percent, the average med school acceptance rate is just 5 percent.

The quick takeaways

Doctor	Lawyer
Time (for full certification)	11-16 years	8-9 years
Expense (med school vs law school)	$150K-$250K	$100-$150K
Competition	High	Medium

Should I Train In Law or Medicine?

Law school requires critical thinking and analytical work, as well as heavy reading and writing. Medical school requires a lot of memorization and hands-on practical work.

If you want to pursue rights and justice and hopefully make the world a fairer place – then law is probably the better option.

If you want to directly help people, save lives and pursue the sciences – then medicine may be the better choice.

Deciding should come down to personal preference, the subjects you enjoy studying, and the type of lifestyle you see for yourself.

Who works in a better environment?

One thing to consider when comparing both occupations is how and where each works.

For the most part, legal work is desk-based. You’ll be expected to work out of an office, completing consults and paperwork when necessary.

Comparatively, doctors have a less sedentary job. They’re required to move around hospitals and clinics, meeting with patients and, specialty-dependent, performing procedures.

Is Law More “Intellectually Challenging” Than Medicine?

In law, the landscape changes often. To be at the top of the profession and stay certified, lawyers need to understand these changes and show a strong ability to communicate them to their clients.

Medicine, although open to the scientific method and new research, may not be as fast-paced. Outside of the clinical environment, innovations and developments take longer to be introduced in the field.

Whether one subject is more intellectually difficult than the other largely comes down to the capabilities of the individual.

Both careers require substantial time and effort to reach a level of mastery and competence.

Doctors Vs Lawyer: Which Is More Stressful?

Every profession has its nuances. In medicine, stress levels and lifestyle depend a lot on medical specialty. Surgeons and emergency medics, for example, tend to work longer, more intense hours than dermatologists and psychiatrists. But again, this is no hard rule.

The case is also similar in law. Contract lawyers, for example, don’t spend time in front of juries or judges, while litigators work after hours to prepare for cases (sometimes under a lot of stress).

Because both law and medicine are complex, with differing subspecialties of varied duty and responsibility, it’s hard to say which is the more stressful.

Obviously, doctors (at least in most specialties), are involved in direct patient care. Sometimes even life and death situations.

The consequences of incompetence in law, although often high-stakes, rarely have such a direct impact.

Do Lawyers or Doctors Earn More Money?

US Bureau of Labor (BLS) data from 2021 shows that doctors earn more money than lawyers.

Doctors make $208,000 per year on average, while lawyers make $127,990. These figures are based on both professions at the end of training.

According to the BLS, employment in the legal field (as a lawyer) is projected to grow by 9% between 2020 and 2030, with a projected 71,500 new jobs created.

These figures confirm the legal field is growing faster than the medical field, with the job outlook for physicians expected to grow by only 3% between 2020 and 2030 (with a projected 24,800 new jobs created).

Such growth might make law look like a more favorable option for those beginning their education.

If lawyers and doctors are compared in terms of payment, lawyers typically get paid by the hour – with the scope to maximize earnings by working more complicated and longer cases.

This is sometimes argued to incentivize lawyers to work slowly, taking time on jobs.

Most doctors, on the other hand, are salaried and don’t usually bill for service provisions by the hour. But like lawyers, many have the opportunity to work in private practice and effectively run their own businesses.

Is It More Prestigious Being A Doctor or A Lawyer?

Because only about 5% of lawyers make more money than doctors (the ones at the highest end of the profession), it’s difficult to justify law being more “prestigious” than medicine. At least in financial terms.

However, when comparing the average of both professions on terms outside the topic of pay, public perception is probably more favorable to doctors than it is to lawyers.

What’s more, the medical profession also tends to have more flexibility in terms of hours (nights/weekends) and variety in terms of the day-to-day. It’s also more “universal” in practice and application. Medical practice doesn’t vary too wildly between state and country.

Law, on the other hand, can be very specific to both state and country. If a lawyer wants to move from New York to California, he or she would need to retake their bar exam under different state laws.

Law is definitely more 9-5 than medicine, however, and perhaps more in-fitting with most lifestyles.

Who Is Smarter, A Lawyer, or A Doctor?

According to American sociologist Robert M. Hauser, the average IQ of a lawyer is in the upper 120s, while the average of a doctor is in the low 130s.

As a reference, nurses and pharmacists have an average IQ of around 110.

While IQ is by no means definitive in terms of intelligence, it’s interesting that doctors have a nearly 10-point higher mean than lawyers.

Final Thoughts: Lawyer VS Doctor

In terms of education, a career in law seems more attainable to the average person than one in medicine. Admission criteria, pre-requisite requirements, and level of competitiveness, at least in terms of the data, seem to suggest as much.

In terms of money-making and career security, however, the average doctor beats the average lawyer.

What wins in a direct comparison of a lawyer vs doctor? That’s for you to decide.

Some things to consider:

1. What kind of lifestyle do you see for yourself (the 9-5 of law or the nights/weekend of medicine?)
2. How long are you willing to train to reach the top of your profession?
3. How much are you willing to spend on education?
4. How academically strong are you in the sciences vs humanities/arts?

Of course, many of these questions come under scrutiny when debating the intrinsics of each profession but they can at least serve as some guideline!