<p>Hello,</p>
<p>i just wanted to know if anyone here had a general opinion about the combined MD/JD degree. Upenn offers a program that one could take in about 6 to 7 years. I thought it may be useful for me at some point down the road to get a Law degree but I thought it would probably be hard for me to do it as a returning student so why not get itout of the way? What do you think? too much debt?</p>
<p>"useful at some point down the road" is not a good enough reason to spend 2-3 years of your life.</p>
<p>I don't think there's any good reason to have both degrees.</p>
<p>Well, it's not an entirely unprecedented combination. The former head of the FDA was an MD/JD, for example. It made sense, too: the FDA deals with very specific decisions regarding consumer safety and industry liability, so having an MD/JD in place actually was pretty reasonable.</p>
<p>But the point is that unless the OP has some very specific reason for this, it's an insane proposition. A JD is not something that you just "keep handy" for a rainy day.</p>
<p>This will satisfy all curiosity...</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pshrink.com/mdjd.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.pshrink.com/mdjd.html</a></p>
<p>hey yeah i was up wayy to late yesterday and i realized today that probably doing both is insane. i want to pursue a career in global health and probably development in africa at some point so i thought the jd would be useful there but now im starting to think i could take a few classes and get experience. Maybe a masters of public health would help more.</p>
<p>Thanks guys!</p>
<p>Again, there do exist some good reasons for wanting the overlap in the fields. But if you're thinking it will "come in handy", that's not one of them.</p>
<p>Reviving this interesting thread to put my two cents in:</p>
<p>I am a lawyer in my 50s. I know several JD/MDs. I have never met anyone who did a combined program, and I can't imagine who should really want to do that.</p>
<p>I can't offer anything too different from what appears in that "pshrink" link, except to confirm it from a different direction. Most of the JD/MDs I know are MDs who, for one reason or another, burned out on practicing medicine, and decided to change careers. It is relatively easy for an experienced doctor to earn enough working part time to cover living expenses and tuition at a third-tier local public law school, and that's what most of them did. With diligence, one can get a JD in 3-4 years that way. Ordinarily that's not the best way to get into law, but for these people -- respected doctors with financial security and an extensive social and professional network, including lots of lawyer friends -- it worked just fine. Generally, they are practicing law, which is what they went to law school to do. Their MDs are essentially marketing tools: some of them specialize in representing doctors or hospitals in business deals, some of them do personal injury or malpractice litigation, some of them do patent law (for which some kind of advanced non-legal degree is generally required), some are doing government policy work. But none of them are doing anything for which an MD is really necessary. And it would be absurd to spend the time it takes to prepare for and obtain an MD, and then get licensed to practice medicine (because why would you get an MD without doing that?), in order to get a relatively minor marketing boost for your legal practice.</p>
<p>If you want to by a physician, and want to be involved in business deals or administration, an MBA or MPH are more valuable degrees, and easier to obtain, than a JD.</p>
<p>A few JD/MDs are lawyers who burned out on practicing law. (Lots of lawyers wish they were doctors. A former senior partner of mine -- a famous tough real estate lawyer, petty dictator, and unmatched high-stakes poker player -- once shocked me by telling me that if he could have his life back he would have gone to medical school, and saved lives instead of helping rich people get richer. And this was a guy who loved helping rich people get richer, and got pretty rich himself doing it.) There aren't so many of those, though. If you start from scratch, it's basically a 10-year process to go from "Start" to having a real, paying job as a doctor, and it really isn't possible to go to medical school or to be a resident part time. So you basically have to burn out on your legal career pretty early (and not have any kids, or have a really rich spouse) for an MD to be a viable option. Most of these people just practice medicine; a few of them use their JDs as a marketing hook for some things, but basically they've flushed the law degrees.</p>
<p>And the web site is absolutely right: Doctors who do a lot of expert witnessing, or who work in administration, pick up all the law they need on the job. Lawyers who do personal injury, medical malpractice, criminal defense work, can learn the medicine they need in a lot fewer than four years. When I was in law school, I did a lot of work on death penalty cases, and various types of psychiatric defenses. I worked with psychiatrists and clinical psychologists a lot. I'm not saying it wasn't a lot of work to learn what I had to learn, but it was the work of months, not years.</p>
<p>I'll add my two cents FWIW. I have known a few JD/MDs. One was a professor in my law school. He was principally a psychiatrist who taught law and psychiatry, and was on the med school faculty as well. I did not take his course, but my roommate thought he was a fabulous teacher (unfortunately deceased.) </p>
<p>I had a college friend who went first to law school and then to medical, and now practices medicine only.</p>
<p>I know another doctor (coincidentally in the same small specialty as the college friend) who is a lawyer as well and practices medicine only.</p>
<p>I myself have a JD/MBA. I practiced law for 9 years, and found the commute to nyc too tiring, and my specialty (M&A and corporate finance) did not transfer well to the provinces. I became a medical administrator, and it has been a good career these last 16 years. Although I loved law, a more manageable lifestyle was and still is preferable. The MBA added a lot of flexibility to my options.</p>
<p>I have seen MD/JDs who head the Regulatory department within Clinical Development in Pharma industry.</p>
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