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Just think about that for a minute. A resident is earning $45K (even in a city like NYC), while a beginning lawyer in a decent firm starts at a minimum of $150K, and their salary keeps increasing during that time. So by the time the MD is done with residency, the lawyer could already be up to $200K or more. He will probably have earned more than $800K in those 5 years, while the doctor has only made $225K--and his starting pay out of residency could well be lower than what the lawyer is already making. Depending on his specialty as well as what area the lawyer is in, the MD might surpass him in salary eventually, but it will take a long time to make up for the huge economic
hole he starts out in.
It's great that you want to do ortho, but I know a lot of a lawyers who make far more than the average ortho--and they earn it for more years, because lawyers don't do residency. So it's pretty hard to medicine to win from a purely FINANCIAL standpoint.
Senor, you keep forgetting that we are trying to compare the averages within a profession. There is truly only a handful of lawyers that make 6 figures out of law school (read: biglaw) and, hell, more than half of lawyers never make it over 100k. Period. (Llike I mentioned earlier, the median is 62k).
Of course you know plenty of lawyers that make more than ortho docs -- they are outliers/rock stars. I could say that I know plenty of docs that make millions and quote spine surgeons, neuro directors and why not even Dr. Oz... None of it matters when we are focusing on the whole picture and not viewing things from a micro POV.
You said that your original post wasn't only about money -- I saw and appreciated the summation of your thought process. I just wanted to do a little debating about the income. 🙂
Props for leaving your wall street job to be a doc. 👍