<p>I know that lawyers have lost a lot of respect in the past decades, and I've come to think that perhaps it's because there are so many subpar law schools who admit any "average" person whereas medical schools require that their students actually be "smart". </p>
<p>Is the law profession no longer respected when we see all of these DUI law "firm" commercials?</p>
<p>As far as law schools go, it is definitely easier to get into an “average” law school than an “average” medical school. Because of this, there are many more lawyers than doctors. However, going to an average law school won’t really get you places (at least not right away).</p>
<p>However, unlike medical schools, law schools do not act as a gatekeeper for the profession; the state bar does. The average passing rate for this test is around 70%, so you do have to be ‘smart’ to be a lawyer.</p>
<p>There’s an insider-lawyer joke that lawyers are smart people who can’t do math – or they would be doctors.</p>
<p>Because lawyers don’t have people’s lives in their hands every day. I want the person handling my operation to have been through a helluvalot of training. Also, you don’t always choose your doctor (heart attack? wham, you’re thrown into the closest hospital with the doctor who happens to be on duty) whereas lawyers need to compete for clients. This allows room for a few sub-par lawyers, where there can be no room for sub-par doctors (although there are).</p>
<p>There have long been allegations that the American Medical Association has deliberately tried to limit the number of physicians produced by US medical schools in order to keep physician pay high.</p>
<p>The ABA has has historically been much more willing to grant membership to new law schools that meet its standards.</p>
<p>Another factor may be the greater willingness of universities to establish new law schools than new medical schools. Law schools don’t require expensive laboratories. The Socratic Method means that law schools can be conducted with relatively large student/faculty ratios. </p>
<p>The fact that there are fewer specific undergraduate prerequisites for prospective lawyers no doubt has an influence on the supply side. The extra year it takes to graduate from medical school is no doubt also a factor.</p>
<p>In any event, poor people in this country are arguably underserved by both professions.</p>
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Actually, the inside joke that I’ve heard (and use) is that lawyers are smart people who can’t do math – or we’d have become accountants.</p>
<p>Getting into med school requires at least a 3.4-3.6 GPA with tough premed courses and clinical experience, while getting into law school requires nothing more than a college degree and an above-median LSAT score. Aside from faculty, a med school requires tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in labs, often spanning several buildings, while a law school needs only a law library.</p>
<p>If the ABA eliminated all third- and fourth-tier law schools, it would help the “DUI law firm commercial” problem.</p>
<p>And then who would defend all the folks accused of driving drunk? </p>
<p>I’m not being facetious. Not everyone who needs a lawyer needs someone who graduated from a top school and charges accordingly. Sometimes you just want a will, or a divorce, or to close on a house–the big firms in general don’t do that kind of work.</p>
<p>so i take it that being a dui defense lawyer is supposed to be shameful for a lawyer?
what about being a lawyer who deals mainly with divorce oir custody? is that as bad? </p>
<p>just out of curiosity, do DUI lawyers tend to make much less money than the average lawyer? what is the average pay range? like 40,000 a year (if you are in a decently sized city)?</p>
<p>There should be no shame. It is a service industry and there are all kinds of needs. It is impossible to predict salary. There are some very wealthy lawyers who handle criminial defense and DUI cases - it depends on the clientele and the caseload. There are also some very wealthy high profile divorce and custody (domestic relations) lawyers. There are lots more making a very average living or struggling - but no way to really predict.</p>
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<p>The ABA has never wanted to seriously open the door to the law profession, which makes this line of reasoning kind of bs. Why would they, when the field is overpopulated, job prospects are awful for people not in T14 and there is little to no aid? If the ABA was willing to make their industry even worse they’d allow undergraduate law programs to exist–which would be fine, because there is no academic reason to have law be a postgraduate only field of study–but they don’t for practical reasons, because they know it would make the situation even worse.</p>
<p>Medical school has greater prerequisites to apply, medical school itself is more difficult, and anyone who wants to go into a field of medicine other than being a GP has to spend additional years studying/working while making nothing. It’s kind of easy to understand why there are more lawyers.</p>
<p>There are areas of the country in which there are too many lawyers. There are areas where there are too few. Appalachian Law School was started in an effort to meet the need of the under-represented. There was hope that people who graduated from there might remain in the area. There are too few lawyers in many of the same areas in which there are too few doctors.</p>
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<p>There is a nation-wide shortage of physicians, there is not a nation-wide shortage of lawyers. Yes, lawyers and doctors alike generally avoid the middle of nowhere–so does everyone else with a high level of education and marketable skills. There are too few doctors everywhere, there’s a complete overload of lawyers in about 90% of the country.</p>
<p>And you know this how?</p>
<p>I think what I’m getting at is not so much a shortage in numbers of lawyers, but the type of lawyer in many parts of the country. There is a shortage of lawyers for the poor in New York City. There is not a shortage of mergers and acquisitions lawyers in New York City. There are too few lawyers in many, many rural areas. I don’t believe there is an over abundance of lawyers in 90% of the country. There is a nationwide shortage of general practice doctors. There are also areas where orthopedic/sports medicine surgeons are falling all over each other. The problem is with distribution.</p>
<p>Just to point this out, it is not practical to compare the average salary of a lawyer to the average salary of a doctor, because the academic range of law school admits is huge. A student with a 2.5 could get into an average law school, but shouldn’t even bother applying to med school.</p>
<p>If you took the average pay of those lawyers who actually had a (realistic) choice between law school and med school (say the top 25% of law students), you will find that this average salary is much higher than $40,000.</p>
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… Are you serious? S-O has been a big boon for law firms, and IP is still a hot topic, but are you actually asking that question, or are you kidding?</p>
<p>edit; I see your second post. More people != more people filling up the variety of fields, people filling up gaps in the country. More people = more people trying to get into the lucrative fields. Prosecutors are underpaid, a kid coming out of a crappy law school is going to be scrapping to get a job he probably won’t–not worrying about the underprivileged when he has 200k in debt and the realization that being a lawyer who isn’t connected is hard has dawned on him.</p>
<p>That may be true, but it doesn’t mitigate the fact that there are many, many parts of the country where there are not enough lawyers. The same dynamics result in too few general practice doctors and perhaps too many plastic surgeons.</p>
<p>In those same areas there are too few IT professionals, there are too few qualified managers, there are too few brand-certified master mechanics, there are too few resources directed to the police and fire department infrastructure, there are too few entrepreneurs, there are too few social workers… The list goes on and on. Pumping out more people in X field isn’t going to fix that problem, it never has, it never will.</p>
<p>I find law to be an incredibly fascinating field, but anyone who thinks it’s easy to make money, or that trials are like an episode of Boston Legal are gonna be shell shocked when they realize that even graduating from a T14 hasn’t guaranteed them anything unless they’re editing the law review or graduating in the top 10% of their class. After normalizing wages for hours worked, most people for the next 5-15 years of their life after 8 years of schooling will be making less than most accountants in private practice or basic programmers. While the wheat does get separated from the chaff in law, there’s a lot of wheat. And there’s not a whole lot of demand for wheat (litigation), there’s demand for data miners. Medicine is totally different–once you’re through the fire there’s plenty of demand for capable physicians. It doesn’t mean people shouldn’t go into law, it means people shouldn’t look at law as an equivalent of working in finance–because they’re not making that money anymore.</p>
<p>Nope - we’re not talking about the same parts of the country. The need for IP lawyers is limited to a relatively small part of the country. The need for those DUI, domestic relations, criminal defense, estates and trust lawyers is everywhere and there are many areas where people are not able to find a lawyer to do a simple will or sue an ex for child support. We’re talking apples and oranges. I understand why they’re not there - they can’t make enough money and, if they could, most people wouldn’t want to live there.</p>