Why is it made easier to become a lawyer than a doctor?

Graduate School Law School
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<p>tetrishead, what’s your background, that you know what lawyers do and how they do it?</p>

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Have you noticed how well these child welfare workers do? I know at least in my own state, DSS is constantly under fire because it does not do its job. And you’re wrong, by the way - most child welfare workers have masters’ degrees, specifically MSW’s.</p>

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Most lawyers do not go to work at big law firms. Sorry to disabuse you of that notion. And lawyers in prosecutors offices may not do “capital murder trials”, of which there are not many, but they do trials themselves which affect peoples’ lives.</p>

<p>I won’t even bother addressing your other issues, since you obviously know exactly what you’re talking about from whatever vast experience you have with the practice of law.</p>

42

<p>

I’ll answer your question with a question, because I like deflecting (this is a very popular lawyer thing, right?). As a lawyer, why do you think the work you did in law school cannot be done by someone without a bachelors degree coming directly from a successful high school career?

MSW’s are for clinical and more advanced positions. If we’re talking about entry-level work, which is what people with bachelor degrees are going to be doing in a social work setting, I fail to see how what they deal with requires less “maturity” (so impossible to quantify that it’s not even worth discussing) than the entry-level work a lawyer does. As for conversations about the efficacy of DCF-type governmental agencies, that’s a discussion for another time. A lack of funding and overworked employees has a hell of a lot more to do with the problems than some magical agency-wide incompetence caused by people not spending 2-4 more years in school.

The problem is that your argument is all conjecture–feelings and preconceived notions you have that may be based on experience, but a solitary experience cannot speak for an entire field of study. You say that an undergraduate degree teaches you how to think, when in reality it teaches you different methods/frameworks of thinking. If someone couldn’t think it’s unlikely they’d be a successful college student in the first place.</p>

<p>You dismiss me with an attempt at sarcasm, but you say nothing concrete to explain why a law degree requires 7 years of post-K-12 schooling. Yes, patent law requires a technical background. Yes, people with a technical background will have more opportunities in IP law. And? Law school could be redone as a four year undergraduate program, with field-specific 1 year LLM programs like in the UK, and you and I both know that nothing would be lost–with the exception of some of the ego of lawyers like yourself. I don’t doubt that law school is difficult if you want to be in the top 10%–just like I don’t doubt that physics at CalTech is difficult if you want to be in the top 10%. It doesn’t mean students should have to study X for 4 years to “learn how to think” and get some “maturity” before they’re allowed to study physics.</p>

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<p>Because, at the moment, people’s lives are considered more precious than the law. After all, it is living people, not dead people, that uphold the law. Doctors have to protect people’s lives, while lawyers deal with law. Hence, doctors need to prove themselves (more-so than lawyers) that they are able to succeed at this more important job.</p>

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<p>Here’s a 2005 article from USA Today that discussed the AMA’s efforts to limit the number of medical students:
[USATODAY.com</a> - Medical miscalculation creates doctor shortage](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm]USATODAY.com”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm)</p>

<p>Some excerpts:</p>

<p>"For the past quarter-century, the American Medical Association and other industry groups have predicted a glut of doctors and worked to limit the number of new physicians. In 1994, the Journal of the American Medical Association predicted a surplus of 165,000 doctors by 2000. </p>

<p>"‘It didn’t happen,’ says Harvard University medical professor David Blumenthal, author of a New England Journal of Medicinearticle on the doctor supply. ‘Physicians aren’t driving taxis. In fact, we’re all gainfully employed, earning good incomes, and new physicians are getting two, three or four job offers.’</p>

<p>"The nation now has about 800,000 active physicians, up from 500,000 20 years ago. They’ve been kept busy by a growing population and new procedures ranging from heart stents to liposuction.</p>

<p>"But unless more medical students begin training soon, the supply of physicians will begin to shrink in about 10 years when doctors from the baby boom generation retire in large numbers.</p>

<p>"‘Almost everyone agrees we need more physicians,’ says Carl Getto, chairman of the Council on Graduate Medical Education, a panel Congress created to recommend how many doctors the nation needs. ‘The debate is over how many.’</p>

<p>"Getto’s advocacy of more doctors is remarkable because his advisory committee and its predecessor have been instrumental since the 1980s in efforts to restrict the supply of new physicians. In a new study sent to Congress, the council reverses that policy and recommends training 3,000 more doctors a year in U.S. medical schools.</p>

<p>"Even the American Medical Association (AMA), the influential lobbying group for physicians, has abandoned its long-standing position that an “oversupply exists or is immediately expected.” </p>

<p>"‘The truth is, we don’t know if there’s a shortage of physicians,’ says AMA President John Nelson, a Salt Lake City obstetrician. ‘It looks like there are enough physicians for the short term, but maybe we need more because of the aging population.’</p>

<p>"Congress controls the supply of physicians by how much federal funding it provides for medical residencies — the graduate training required of all doctors. </p>

<p>"To become a physician, students spend four years in medical school. Graduates then spend three to seven years training as residents, usually treating patients under supervision at a hospital. Residents work long hours for $35,000 to $50,000 a year. Even doctors trained in other countries must serve medical residencies in the USA to practice here. </p>

<p>"Medicare, which provides health care to the nation’s seniors, also is the primary federal agency that controls the supply of doctors. It reimburses hospitals for the cost of training medical residents.</p>

<p>"The government spends about $11 billion annually on 100,000 medical residents, or roughly $110,000 per resident. The number of residents has hovered at this level for the past decade, according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. </p>

<hr>

<p>"In 1997, to save money and prevent a doctor glut, Congress capped the number of residents that Medicare will pay for at about 80,000 a year. Another 20,000 residents are financed by the Veterans Administration and Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor. Teaching hospitals pay for a small number of residents without government assistance. </p>

<p>"Medicare, which faces enormous financial pressure in coming decades, already spends 3% of its budget training physicians and may not have the resources to spend more.</p>

<p>“The United States stopped opening medical schools in the 1980s because of the predicted surplus of doctors. The Association of American Medical Colleges dropped this long-standing view in 2002 with the statement:
‘It now appears that those predictions may be in error.’ Last month, it recommended increasing the number of U.S. medical students by 15%.”</p>

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<p>That’s an interesting read. Maybe you’re right, and it was mostly the AMA being predatory. Building an allopathic medical school is still the single most difficult graduate field to build a school for, though, and being very familiar with FSU I can tell you that their undergraduate program could use a hell of a lot of work done to it.</p>

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<p>Tetrishead, I find it interesting that you feel comfortable scornfully dismissing the observations of a real-life lawyer, and basing your opinion on your own theory which appears to be based on a microscopically small fact base. You have no idea of the wide scope of jobs undertaken by “entry-level” attorneys. Most do not go to work for large law firms; your perspective on the jobs typically performed by recent law school graduates is skewed by a small segment of the profession.</p>

<p>In fact, most recent law school grads will be thrust into doing “regular” legal work quite quickly once they pass the bar exam. There is no legal barrier to a lawyer being admitted to the bar one day and trying a case, drafting a will, negotiating a contract and, most importantly – advising a client about what to do in response to their important personal dilemmas – the next. Their advice and conduct will affect people’s freedom, family relationships, financial security and peace of mind immediately. They can be entrusted with other people’s money. Depending on the state they practice in, they will be exempt from laws regulating other people’s practice of a variety of professional activities, such as real estate and money lending.</p>

<p>Some people have the maturity to handle that responsibility four years after graduating from high school. Some still don’t have it seven years later. But maturity is absolutely a factor in this profession in a way it really isn’t in, say, physics. There’s a reason for age limits on driving, voting, drinking, and being elected to federal office. Sometimes young people just don’t know how much they don’t know.</p>

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<p>I look to the jobs most people in the T14 are interested in having. I recognize the fact that plenty of people can take the bar and start their own firm, or start working for the government in which case they’ll most likely be given more responsibility than if they went into big law. It doesn’t change my opinions on the topic of law being a postgraduate field of study, and it doesn’t change the fact that no one has been able to refute my opinions on that topic with either facts or logical reasoning.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think drafting a will, trying a case, negotiating a contract and advising a client is more important than what a CPA does? When a CPA advises someone on a contract (which is extremely common, it’s not all lawyers), or makes sure someone isn’t about to become fodder for the IRS? A good CPA is a life-long advisor in everything from laws to investing and saving for the future. How about a financial advisor, who’s handling the entirety of one families assets, while advising his client on how to plan for his retirement and the future of his children?</p>

<p>Do you think this work is more important than the quantitative analyst who is partly responsible for a bank making the decision to invest billions of dollars–putting the welfare of thousands of employees in his hands if there’s a catastrophic mistake?</p>

<p>How about an actuary, doing risk management? How about a claims adjuster? A family loses their house, their sole mode of transportation, they need money–and a claims adjuster has to make an equitable decision, he has to balance the pressures of management with the pressures of making helping a family in distress.</p>

<p>Most states set the minimum age to be an EMT as 18 years old. EMT-B in Minnesota. $1 an hour when on call. $10 the first hour a call is received. $7 an hour until the end of call. There are EMTs who are freshman college students. I know someone who just worked 108 hours of clinicals in a week for his paramedic schooling. I’ve known EMTs who have worked 6 16 hour shifts in a row, and I’ve known EMTs who’ve worked 3 straight days without sleep by checking out for 2 hours in between shifts to stay within scheduling policies. Do you want stories? About dead kids and decapitated wives and nursing homes neglecting the elderly? How about a drunk driver taking out a van filled with a father, mother, two three year old girls and a seven year old boy? Father was the only one who survived, and from what I heard he put a gun in his mouth about two months out of the hospital. I can give you stories of kids younger than yours dealing with these situations working longer hours than first year associates in biglaw for minimum wage.</p>

<p>The minimum age to join the Army is 17. There are 80 year old Senators, but there aren’t 80 year old fire support specialists. There are 19 year olds putting steel-frames into buildings alongside 40 year olds, there are 22 year olds working in investment banking next to 38 year olds, there are 21 year old software programmers at Boeing developing navigation systems for the planes you put your kids on to go to college. Most people go through a trial-by-fire, and they either survive or they don’t. Law is not special, even if lawyers think they are.

Most people graduate with their bachelors degree after they turn 21.</p>

<p>This is the most vile character trait one can have, as far as I’m concerned. Arrogance for no reason. I’m not sure if it’s the arrogance that bothers me or the lack of substance behind it that bothers me. It’s very easy to look down on people in their early-20s, and believe someone is an “adult” because they’re 27 and just out of law school. Ignoring the fact that law school social dynamics can most aptly be described as high school 2.0, the belief that others cannot be a lawyer based on nothing but arbitrary “feelings” should be inherently antithetical to the thought process of any functioning, intelligent student of justice–which is what law school is supposed to make someone, yeah?</p>

<p>Law school curriculum is condensed into 3 years. If requirements were spread across 4, it would be no more difficult to go through law school than it would to be get a bachelors degree in economics from Williams. There is nothing a lawyer does that requires more maturity than any of the other professions I’ve listed. There is only a sense of arrogance, and entitlement. That a lawyer needs to be older–when he doesn’t. That the schooling is more difficult–which it isn’t. That you need more maturity to get past the bar–which you don’t. There will be the immature and the mature in any age group, in any profession. You, like my friend the “real-life lawyer” and his “observations” have nothing but conjecture to defend an indefensible position.</p>

<p>I would expect more from an “adult” (you, presumably), and from someone who’s supposedly been “trained” in proper argumentation techniques.</p>

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<p>I find it mildly amusing is that someone who has experienced neither an undergraduate education nor law school would lecture people who have experienced both on their “arrogance [and] lack of substance behind it” because they’re unpersuaded by his blanket assertion that law school is nothing more than four years of undergraduate material compressed into three calendar years.</p>

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<p>Thanks, Greybeard. I also find it amusing.</p>

<p>tetrishead, I have no further desire to “convince” you - your opinions are of no consequence. One thing that you will learn is that it is impossible, and futile, to “argue” with someone who knows everything. Please, go change the world before you no longer do.</p>

<p>

– Mark Twain</p>

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<p>Actually, Tetrishead reminds me of a phenomenon I refer to as “YLS” or “Young Lawyer’s Syndrome” - usually exhibited by a male attorney with about five years of experience under his belt. The syndrome is marked by absolute confidence in one’s own utter correctness in the specific field in which the YL has achieved a level of competence, impatience with those who fail to perceive that superiority, and arch contempt for the poor fools who get in the way of the Master of the Universe plying his craft (while the old guys just chuckle and shake their heads in the back of the room.)</p>

<p>Fortunately, practice has a way of “curing” most people of that affliction after a few more years. (It’s not exclusively a male disease, but it seems to be most virulent among the guys.)</p>

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<p>I’m more than willing to be proved wrong. I enjoy being proved wrong. There’s always more to learn from being wrong than there is to learn from being right. What find I find adorable is that three people have managed to turn my argument, essentially that there is no reason for law school to be a graduate field of study–other than the assumption made by those who believe themselves to be correct that “maturity” somehow can be quantified as a period of 3 years–back on me, by using some reverse arrogance argument. In effect an encapsulation of all that I have said is used as a mirror, and although my tone may make me hypocritical, my stances are correct. While you may think that I perceive myself to be above others, you must admit that it is somewhat ironic that the very personality flaw you accuse me of is the very personality flaw I initially accused of causing you to have the opinion you do. Hubris is a human condition, not just a symptom of youth.</p>

<p>It’s reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s stances of “all right-thinking people agree with me, and you’re a right-thinking person”–only lacking the charm of Ronald Reagan. We are two sides of the same coin, although I suspect my side has much more to do with meritocratic ideals than yours does.</p>

<p>Since we are reveling in quotations and musings, I’ll go back to the Mark Twain well.

</p>

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<p>I go back and forth between two Biblical admonitions:</p>

<p>“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”</p>

<p>“Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his conceits.”</p>

<p>There are seven states (New York and California are two of the seven) where one can become an attorney without ever matriculating at a law school. <a href=“http://www.ncbex.org/fileadmin/mediafiles/downloads/Comp_Guide/CompGuide.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ncbex.org/fileadmin/mediafiles/downloads/Comp_Guide/CompGuide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This route involves undertaking a formal and extended course of study with a member of the bar, and then passing the bar exam. There are over 154,000 members of the California Bar; fewer than a hundred gained membership in that fashion. I’ve practiced law in this state for nearly a quarter of a century, and don’t believe that I have ever met one of those lawyers. Most clients prefer lawyers who went to law school, just as most people prefer to eat at restaurants that have been inspected by the health department.</p>

<p>Under ABA rules, law schools must limit their enrollment to people who have completed three years of undergraduate study. Most law schools nevertheless only admit students with bachelor’s degrees. </p>

<p>The US Department of Education has conducted studies that show a strong correlation between the level of literacy achieved, and the level of education completed:
[National</a> Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) - Demographics - Education](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_dem_edu.asp]National”>National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) - Demographics - Education)</p>

<p>There are no doubt people who would survive law school without having gone to college. I suspect that most law schools would have a tough time identifying who those people were without the benefit of a college transcript. (Before the NBA changed its rules, there were a few people who went straight from high school to NBA stardom. There were a lot of others who washed out because their deficiencies weren’t obvious until they started playing against tougher competition.)</p>

<p>There are a lot of lawyers on this board. None of them have chimed in to say they share your opinion that law school is qualitatively no different than undergraduate work.</p>

<p>Under the rules of evidence in most jurisdictions, only the opinions of experts are admissible. (Apropos one of your earlier dismissive comments, circumstantial evidence is admissible.) </p>

<p>It’s also been held in many jurisdictions that opinions are inherently neither true nor false, and their expression accordingly cannot give rise to an action for defamation.</p>

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<p>Actually, a proposal which has floated around legal circles ever since I can remember has been to require some sort of apprenticeship - which would be a different way of “seasoning” a prospective lawyer, and in good cases a far better means of providing training than the current 4 + 3 years of schooling. But the downsides of the concept - the practical implementation of it, and the near-certainty of abuse - have kept the idea from ever gaining much traction.</p>

<p>The concept is utilized in many other professions: CPAs, medical specialists, etc. But law still has the wild west approach where once you graduate law school and pass the bar exam you’ve got a license to do just about anything that any lawyer can do, whether you know what you’re doing or not. Board certification of specialists in specific areas of law - which requires a substantial amount of actual case experience - is starting to take hold, but it’s still in its infancy compared to medical specialty certification.</p>

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<p>

This is an extremely poor analogy, and you should strive for better. What you’re essentially saying is clients prefer someone who has been vetted, insofar as they have studied law directly from an institution of higher learning containing faculty that teach the subject. I’ve never claimed lawyers should not be students of law. Instead of matriculating to a graduate school and spending an additional three years satisfying the “maturity” requirement of elder statesmen on internet forums, they could study the field at the undergraduate level and receive a bachelors in law–which, despite protestations, is what a JD is (it is an introductory degree to a topic with some intermediate and advanced studies, with the option of continuing education further at a postgraduate level). Christopher Langdell was very intelligent, but there was no need to look at the case and socratic methods and not believe they could be applied at the undergraduate level. If anything, to think that the case and socratic methods are not applied at the undergraduate level (especially in business and philosophy, respectively) in some form or another is to be completely divorced from reality. To continue to twist and appropriate the words of Mark Twain, first get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure.</p>

<p>Law schools emphasize that someone with any undergraduate degree can apply, and from all I know of law school admissions prefer students arrive as blank slates when it comes to legal topics. Why, then, would law be a graduate field? What would transpire between the time a promising high school student with a strong academic background enters college and receives a undergraduate degree in a field totally unrelated to law that would magically qualify them for receiving the honor of a legal education? The answer, of course, is nothing.

Your argument from two pages ago was that the bar is the practical barrier. What’s changed? Most difficult fields have weed-out courses, law could easily do the same.

No one here is an academic who does research on the topic of education. A lawyer would not be considered an expert on curricula educational differences between the rigor of a typical law school compared to a typical undergraduate program were it to be condensed into 3 years, and would most likely be completely unfamiliar with the UK system. A doctor wouldn’t be considered an expert on the topic of medical school education unless he was an instructor at a medical school and spent time in administration and a financier wouldn’t be considered an expert on the topic of business school education unless he taught and published research on the efficacy of business school education and methods.

Law schools would not exist, law departments would exist. There are a multitude of standardized tests that exist at the undergraduate level purely to prove competency and aptitude to complete a collegiate education, and they happen to be discussed in detail on this very forum.</p>

<p>There is no technical barrier to understanding the educational curriculum contained within a law school with the exception of literacy–something most incoming freshmen are presumed to have. You do not need an understanding of topography, nor do you need to have taken chemistry and biology to understand the coursework in a law school. It’s not an atypical professional school, and law schools go to great lengths to explain that they are institutions of learning and not just trade (lawyer) schools.</p>

<p>What is the difference between the study of sociology and the study of law? The study of economics and the study of law? The study of psychology and the study of law? If you can find an answer to these questions, then I suspect you’ll have found the answer I’ve been searching for on the topic of why law is the one field that cannot be taught at the undergraduate level.</p>

<p>

Apprenticeships were how law was originally taught (along with most professions). I think sitting in a purely academic setting for a time is required to practice anything proficiently, though.</p>

<p>I will return, for the last time, to Mark Twain–who has seen fit to peer into the future, as an oracle might, and bless this internet argument with a perfect sentence to summarize all in a way that I am not nearly intelligent enough to do on my own.</p>

<p>“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”</p>

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<p>Does the fact that it’s harder to get into vet school than med school mean that veterinarians, as a group, are smarter than doctors? Or are there other factors at work, like the fact that there are comparatively few vet schools compared to medical schools? My point is that I don’t think that you can intelligently make these kinds of generalizations. There are some VERY smart individuals in any profession – doctors, lawyers, vets, accountants, etc. There are also some individuals in every profession who have marginal skills or, worse, who are plainly incompetent. As an attorney, I’ve represented physicians, accountants and other lawyers who frankly should not have been admitted to practice in their respective professions. I’ve also met brilliant practitioners in all of these professions.</p>

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<p>Tetrishead,</p>

<p>You begin by quoting me, and then reply with a lengthy paragraph that begins and ends with these two sentences:</p>

<p>“This is an extremely poor analogy, and you should strive for better… To continue to twist and appropriate the words of Mark Twain, first get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure.”</p>

<p>I haven’t even quoted Mark Twain in this discussion. And you’re admonishing about twisting and appropriating his words? Who is it who needs to get his facts?</p>

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<p>

I am pleased to see you are not addressing any of the issues I raised, it serves only to reaffirm.</p>

<p>

I was actually admitting to twisting and appropriating the words of Mark Twain–although admittedly less than Chedva, considering that Twain is someone who said you should be respectful to your superiors, but only if you have any. Which I think could be considered hubris, but in context I’m sure it’s more of a situational thing and less egotistical than it sounds.</p>

<p>So yes, I suppose you still do need to get your facts. I am not sure if they can be delivered by carrier pigeon, but I’d certainly look into that method of transportation purely for novelty.</p>

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<p>Whats going on? I though this discussion was about doctors and lawyers. Probably wrong.</p>

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<p>Having read this thread, I see that tetrishead believes one can become a lawyer without the benefit of undergraduate university. It appears he now believes one can become a judge without the benefit of law school.</p>

<p>Okay, I’ve enjoyed this thread. Now back to serious stuff.</p>

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<p>

Fair question. My answer is that for most lawyers, the most important “skill” is not an understanding of the technical details of tort law, or the rule against perpetuities, or whatever specific knowledge set may govern a particular task, but judgment. I’ve been practicing as a lawyer for over thirty years. I’m not as smart as I was when I began, and I probably don’t know any more “law” than I did on day 1. (Legal knowledge tends to become obsolete on a regular basis.) But I have developed a much deeper understanding of the manifold consequences of any action I perform, or advice I give to a client, than I did after graduating from law school, let alone college. Those consequences may be obvious, subtle, overt, latent, financial, emotional, etc. and having an understanding of them and an appreciation of their impact on the client is central to the art of lawyering.</p>

<p>What distinguishes law from the other professions you reference is that a lawyer’s job is very often to advise clients who are facing decisions that need to be made which will have a great impact on their lives in many different ways. Understanding a client’s actual needs (which may not be what you would first assume, and may also differ from what the client initially thinks they want) and assessing the likely consequences of whatever advice you give is a vital part of the job. And it’s not generally something you learn from a textbook. That’s why apprenticeship has an appeal as a prerequisite for licensure, despite its problems.</p>