Hey guys,
Instead of discussing about "choose what interests you the most," I wanted to discuss more along the lines about the effort and benefits of becoming a lawyer. Today, I discovered that my friend is gonna make a lot of money this summer and hes in law school. I am talking about 30 grand and when he graduates from law school, he'll be making 145 grand and in 7 years after being an associate, as a partner, he'll be making 1 million plus. This of course, is at a top 25 law firm (#10 to be specific), so I know that this is simply not an opportunity to get at any law firm.
Now, I know my friend worked really hard to get to where he is, and you know it was simply the usual - GPA + LSAT- which was the basis for his ability to land at a top law firm so easily. At this moment, I am beginning to consider the possiblity as a lawyer purely on a financial and stress basis as well as that I know I can handle the workload.
Well, as a premed, while I'm managing to do really well GPAwise (3.95), enjoying my courses and extracurriculars, I do not enjoy the fact that I will put 2x effort and get paid (even as a possible surgeon) half the amount I can get paid if I worked at a top law firm.
Putting the talk about attending medical school for such and such reasons, I wanted to ask your thoughts about job stability, pre-law and lawyer life, and how difficult it is to land at a top law firm. My friend basically said that after freshman year of law school, he got the position based on his GPA. Furthermore, I wanted to ask about mroe advice on how hard it is being a lawyer compared to a doctor as well as the salary/lifestyle issues. Furthermore, I am not sure, but I am not sure, but just to throw it out there, is being Asian (Pakistani) a disadvantage to landing and working at a top firm. My parents suggested that there is still a lawyer preference (for Caucasians today), and medicine is one of those fields that is strictly merit-based when you are working. So, I am a bit naive when it comes to becoming a lawyer.
Thanks
I think a pre-allo premed board is an incredibly strange place to ask "about job stability, pre-law and lawyer life, and how difficult it is to land at a top law firm", and "how hard it is being a lawyer compared to a doctor", because only I and about ten other people on SDN have lived the law school/lawyer life. But I will endeavor to answer your question. I appologize in advance that I will be all over the gamut here.
Job stability/salary -- unlike medicine, there are far more lawyers than there are good jobs. There are many times more lawyers coming out of law school each year than doctors. Thus competition for the good paying jobs is fierce, and job stability is not as good.
The average law school grad earns about $40k, but the range is huge, with the highest starting salary for a full time lawyer I have seen being about $175k (plus some amount of year end bonus and benefits) and the lowest I have seen at about $20k (legal aid in the SW, no bonus and few benefits). The big city big firm salary norm these days is about $145k to start, with annual increases. So it is fiercely competitive during school and interviewing season because it's not like everyone is guaranteed to earn a living let alone command a high salary. But bear in mind that because there are so many more lawyers out there, in fact likely more starting lawyers than post-residency medical school grads earn six digits in their first year of private practice -- it's just that as a percentage of the profession it is not as good. So the good students at the top schools are in pretty good shape (and certain regional schools do well, and law review at most schools do well). And as a result, school pedigree matters more. Also bear in mind that lawyers do just 3 years of school, incur less debt, and then start earning, whereas in medicine, you do 4 years of school and then at least 3 years of (lower paid) residency before you start your private practice career and start to pay down your loans. So time value of money works in the lawyer's favor -- he will be saving and investing long before any physician starts to match his paycheck. Thus every career changer from law I have come across has gotten cautioned by med school interviewers and other physicians that they will likely never get back to the same financial position if they make the change to medicine, and are likely correct.
As for job stability -- I have known folks at large law firms that went under in tight markets, and folks at law firms that were absorbed in merger by larger firms and very quickly found themselves on the streets as redundant departments -- blood in the water. I have also known people who stayed put 20 years at the same firm. And I have known folks who made a series of lateral moves, each time jumping into better salary and nicer offices -- it is a field of constant mobility, and no pattern really dominates. The folks who manage to lock in a portfolio of portable clients who will follow them whereever they end up always do best, so marketing and busness generation ("rainmaking") is key to lawyer success. If you just want to do work and get paid, or get paid to be the smartest or the best at what you do, you might be disappointed in law -- you need to land business, and the dumb guy with the high school buddy or dad who throws six digits of business to the firm annually is going to make partner faster than the guy who knows everything and publishes ten papers a year. The smart guy can get there too, but a book of business talks louder than IQ. So you need to learn how the game is played, and this too becomes a source of competition.
Pre-law life in undergrad - basically no different than premed, except that you can avoid sciences. You mostly live on a steady diet of term papers and essay tests, and take courses where you read a lot. Easy for some, harder for others. The application process is much shorter and easier, and the LSAT is less of a bear than the MCAT.
Law school life - I suggest you read Scott Turow's "1L" or watch the movie "The Paper Chase". Both take place at Harvard many decades ago (70s?), but since Harvard is the model for all law schools, most schools endeavor to capture this same kind of experience. Socratic method is big in law school, so you can expect to be put on the spot pretty much every day, which ensures that you keep up with the work. Many schools have a single exam in each course at the end of the year, so it's very all or nothing on a full year of work. And most of the exams are essay, "issue spotting" type questions, where you find the legal issues in a passage and then analyze them based on the law. Very little short answer in law school. So again, if you are the kind of person who likes to read and write a lot, this will be right in your wheelhouse. Grades matter (probably more than med school), making law review matters, getting a good summer job matters. So competition abounds.
How hard law/medicine are -- to do well in law at a big firm, you will be working long hours. Most firms work on a billable hour system, and expect you to log significant billable hours. And since you can rarely bill all of your hours, you need to expect to be working substantially longer than whatever billable hour limit gets set. Most big firm lawyers seem to work 12+ hour days. On big deals it's not unheard of to be there overnight. As an associate, you can expect to be working at least one day a weekend. There are smaller "lifestyle" firms where you can work 50 hrs/week, but they tend not to be as richly paid (associates usually earning about half). Medicine is probably a bit harder, especially during residency, but they often even out over time. Med school is much harder than law school, though. In terms of stress, they are pretty equal. In medicine you can injure someone's health if you screw up, in law, you can injure their bank account. They probably get more upset with you about the latter. You are working long hours with high expectations in both careers, and divorce, depression, alcoholism and drug addiction rates are similarly high in both fields. Neither is an easy route, stresswise. You don't go into a profession if you are stress-averse.
Asians in law -- most of my colleagues who were Asian seemed to do quite well. They are in short supply, and all law firms want diversity, largely in hopes that it opens the door to more business. I know folks who got client contact much earlier than the norm because the firm felt that an asian client would be happier with another asian face in the room. I wouldn't consider your national origins a disadvantage in law.
