Calling MD/JDs, how do med school and law school compare?

[bialy]

Hi, I just found these boards. They look like a great resource.

Anyway, my situation: I recently graduated from law school. I survived, but I really hated it, and do not want to practice. I started undergrad pre-med, and a lot of what I DID enjoy about law school was related to medicine (wrote papers, took classes, and did research on med mal, bioethics, etc). Since then, I've volunteered at a hospital and am applying to post-bac programs, hoping to eventually get into med school.

My big question, for those of you who have attended both med school and law school: how do they compare? What can I expect? How are classes generally conducted? How do the paces compare? How did you feel about each one?

Other questions:
my GPA from law school was not amazing; my undergrad is a 3.5, and I plan on doing better than that in post-bac. Do med schools care about law school grades?

Also, I wrote a paper for a health law class that my prof wanted me to turn into a CLE; she is willing to support me all the way through the process, and very excited about it. Is it something a med school would be excited to see on my resume, or would they not care? Worse, it is about a topic which doctors and lawyers tend to disagree (medical futility laws); the CLE would be neutral, but is there a significant risk a med school would be turned off by the subject matter?

Any other comments or advice is much appreciated. Thanks!

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[Handy388]

www.jdunderground.com, do you read that site?

 

[bialy]

I try to stay away...I'm past the point of needing JD advice, and they're usually full of depressing trolls. Abovethelaw gets any industry gossip I might be interested in eventually anyway.

 

[kia ora]

well, I won't start med school until next year so I can't answer your first question yet. however, I have been to law school and I practiced law for several years. I didn't like law school very much, but I loved practicing. so don't rule it out until you try it. law school =/= the practice of law (in my experience, anyway).

as for your Q about law school gpa, in general med schools won't care much about your law school grades. mine weren't stellar and it hasn't come up in interviews (though I did graduate from a top 5 law school, so my gpa has never mattered for anything...prestige FTW).

I think your proposed CLE sounds very interesting and it is likely that med school admissions ppl would consider it an interesting activity. like everything else, though, it will all be in how you spin it on your app/in your interviews.

one last thing: this is just my opinion, but if I were an adcom person, I would look far less favorably upon a candidate who had graduated from law school and never practiced (and immediately began the process of preparing for med school application) than upon one who had actually worked for a while as a lawyer. that's not to say that people in your situation haven't succeeded in gaining admission to med school, it just seems like it might be a tougher fight. in any event, good luck to you!

 

[Slack3r]

Any particular reason for the switch, Kai? Just curious.

 

[Handy388]

well, I won't start med school until next year so I can't answer your first question yet. however, I have been to law school and I practiced law for several years. I didn't like law school very much, but I loved practicing. so don't rule it out until you try it. law school =/= the practice of law (in my experience, anyway).

as for your Q about law school gpa, in general med schools won't care much about your law school grades. mine weren't stellar and it hasn't come up in interviews (though I did graduate from a top 5 law school, so my gpa has never mattered for anything...prestige FTW).

I think your proposed CLE sounds very interesting and it is likely that med school admissions ppl would consider it an interesting activity. like everything else, though, it will all be in how you spin it on your app/in your interviews.

one last thing: this is just my opinion, but if I were an adcom person, I would look far less favorably upon a candidate who had graduated from law school and never practiced (and immediately began the process of preparing for med school application) than upon one who had actually worked for a while as a lawyer. that's not to say that people in your situation haven't succeeded in gaining admission to med school, it just seems like it might be a tougher fight. in any event, good luck to you!

I don't think job that pays for actual law practice are very abundant. Of course OP, which law school have you graduated from? If you didn't come from a T14 I suggest you immediately start your postpac work and try to get into med school.

 

[lawdoc]

well, I won't start med school until next year so I can't answer your first question yet. however, I have been to law school and I practiced law for several years. I didn't like law school very much, but I loved practicing. so don't rule it out until you try it. law school =/= the practice of law (in my experience, anyway).

as for your Q about law school gpa, in general med schools won't care much about your law school grades. mine weren't stellar and it hasn't come up in interviews (though I did graduate from a top 5 law school, so my gpa has never mattered for anything...prestige FTW).

I think your proposed CLE sounds very interesting and it is likely that med school admissions ppl would consider it an interesting activity. like everything else, though, it will all be in how you spin it on your app/in your interviews.

one last thing: this is just my opinion, but if I were an adcom person, I would look far less favorably upon a candidate who had graduated from law school and never practiced (and immediately began the process of preparing for med school application) than upon one who had actually worked for a while as a lawyer. that's not to say that people in your situation haven't succeeded in gaining admission to med school, it just seems like it might be a tougher fight. in any event, good luck to you!

For full disclosure, I also am a medical school applicant, not a current student. Here it goes.

I concur with this poster. I had my doubts about law starting in my second year of law school, but decided to stick it out to see if practice was different than studying. For me it did not get any better, in fact got worse. But is very different. You should at least give it a shot.

I also agree that it might be a problem that you never practiced. It might look more like you are drifting between grad programs, rather than changing careers after realizing that the first was not for you. I also think this is made even more problematic by the current state of the economy. They might be inclined to question "is this person applying because he wants to be a doctor, or because he cannot find employment in the current environment?" I have no reason to question your motivation, but rather am just offering some questions that might come up. Don't overestimate the confidence you will have in a med school interview when you can say I really tried it, but it wasn't for me because of these reasons...

As far as law school GPA, you should know as much as any other law student that the numerical GPA means nothing. Every law school has a different curve, just make it clear in your application. That being said I have not been asked about mine at all. I had a 3.1, but graduated with honors and on law review. Sell your law school experience and the good aspects of that record (your possible CLE) and you should be fine. It's not like you have an average GPA in a science grad program... I would tend to think the specific skills used in law school are different than those used in med school.

One final word... the process of applying to medical school is much more difficult and painful than applying to law school. There are some many more hoops to jump through, and the MCAT is pretty close to the pain of the bar exam in studying and anxiety. Be warned. I say this because the first time I met my premed adviser at my post-bacc, he told me that in his experiance it was easier to get into med school than law school. Looking back, I don't know what drugs he takes... but they must be good.

Good luck to you.

 

[bialy]

Thanks for the advice and congrats on getting into med school. It seems like a huge uphill battle from my vantage point, so it's nice to get input from someone who's been here before.

Honestly, I'd be willing to give practice a try if the economy weren't so awful, and if I didn't have complicating factors that make practicing right now hard. I went to a T3 in a rural state, and, if I wanted to live there forever, I'd have a job due to the small size of the local legal community. But I don't, and we moved to a different region (where we don't want to stay long-term, so I can't take the bar) so my husband could go to a T1. I don't regret having a J.D., and feel like it could provide some unique opportunities in my career regardless of what happens with med school. I think there is a place for our perspective in the medical field, and I hope to use my J.D. in one way or another, even if it never involves actual legal practice.

What are your career plans, and why did you leave the law? I'm always curious to hear what goals MD/JDs have, because the possibilities are so broad.

 

[bialy]

Thanks for the info and advice. I know law school GPAs are their own craziness, I just worry that med schools think law school is graded like other liberal arts grad programs (ie, super-easy) and my middling GPA will look that much worse to them.

 

[kia ora]

What are your career plans, and why did you leave the law? I'm always curious to hear what goals MD/JDs have, because the possibilities are so broad.

well, I'm keeping an open mind. there are a couple of areas of medicine I am more interested in than others, but I feel like I really can't know what kind of medicine I want to practice until I actually experience some of the different areas (during third year rotations). at this point, I'm not really planning to combine my two degrees formally (for example, I don't want to be head of the FDA or anything:...though it might be nice to pick up some extra $ as an expert witness every now and then...). I imagine that my legal training and education will be beneficial in less concrete ways. for example, I'm very logical and analytical, my (non-bench) research skills are top notch, I write well (my posts on this board excepted🙂 and I have heaps of experience dealing with people from all kinds of backgrounds and walks of life, given the type of law I practiced. I believe those things will help me a great deal in med school/practice.

I think there will be one (well, many, really!) marked difference between law school and med school. in law school, we didn't really do stuff...we read a lot, we discussed a lot...but we didn't really "do" much. It seems like in med school you actually do things. I like to do things, so I look forward to that.

I'll be honest, the whole process of getting to the point of even being able to apply to med schools was kind of daunting. overall, I enjoyed it (the classes, etc) but the whole process was filled with uncertainty and I feel extremely lucky that it has worked out for me. I am really excited to start school next year! again, if this is what you really want then work very hard, don't get discouraged and though you need to keep your eye on the ultimate goal, try to enjoy the process along the way; it makes it so much better

 

[bialy]

That's really what I'm anticipating about med school, and also pre-med classes. I hated that law school was so hands-off and casebook-based. I took a chem and bio class the summer after my 2L year because I was hating law school and starting to think seriously about med school, and I loved it. I don't know if it's just that undergrad classes feel easier in general after law school, or if it is the uptick in hands-on learning. That's sort of what I'm hoping to hear from med students who have also been to law school- that although it's hard (probably worse than law school by far), at least it is logical and finite and practical.