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Lawyers Rank 17th on List of Best and Worst Paying Jobs

Forbes Magazine just released the latest list that should capture the attention of rankings-obsessed lawyers -- "The Best and Worst Paying Jobs List." With an average salary of $118,280, lawyers place 17th, below most medical specialists, CEOs and airline pilots.  Still, lawyers can take heart -- not only do their earnings surpass dishwashers, bus boys and salon workers -- but they also make more than Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet, who pays himself a miserly $100,000 a year.

So does a career in medicine make more sense from a financial perspective than law?  Not necessarily.  The Forbes story explores some of the reasons not to become a doctor, including anticipated cuts in Medicaid reimbursements to doctors over the coming years and the cost of malpractice insurance. 

In addition, tuition costs for medical school are higher than ever, with most medical students graduating with a median debt of $135,000.  And lucrative specialties like dermatology or anesthesiology (the top paying position on the Forbes list) require extra years of training, which means that most doctors won't start earning money and paying down debt until their mid-30s.  By contrast, new law grads, at least those who matriculate to Biglaw, earn six figure salaries for on-the-job training.  So why do large firm lawyers complain so much, when at least at the outset, they're doing far better than new doctors?

Even with the stress of malpractice actions and reduced insurance payments looming, it's always been my impression that doctors felt more satisfied in their careers than lawyers -- even though both law and medicine are service professions with a focus on helping others.   Do you agree that doctors more content than lawyers --  and if so why?

Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 16, 2008 at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Comments

Here are some links relating to physician lifestyle concerns:

http://westallen.typepad.com/idealawg/2008/05/aligned-lifesty.html

Posted by: Stephanie | May 16, 2008 3:08:27 PM

I don't agree that Doctors are happier in their careers than lawyers due to the heavy regulation of medicine and the HMO realities of the marketplace.

Lawyers can more easily become sole practitioners and modify or change their careerpaths.

To be sure, stress levels in both professions can be unhealthy. Physicians are more likely to feel trapped and may well feel that one half their lives were taken from them due to the rigors of residency.

Posted by: David Sizemore | May 16, 2008 3:18:58 PM

Why are the doctors and the dentists broken out into various categories? Is it really useful to have Prosthodontists (all 480 of them) and Podiatrists (all 9,020 of them) counted as separate jobs at #6 and #16, respectively?

If you group all the doctors, you end up with a category in the same order of magnitude as the lawyers (547,710). You can group the dentists / orthodontists / etc and end up with something significantly smaller than either the doctor or lawyer groups. Now you have comparable groups, I think.

Your top 6 then now looks something like this:
1. Doctors
2. Dentists, et al
3. CEOs
4. Airline pilots, et al
5. Psychiatrists (different enough that I won't count them as doctors)
6. Lawyers

Cheer up, emo associate - you're doing better than you thought.

Posted by: Rajiv | May 18, 2008 5:50:49 PM

Hey Carolyn, paid your ABA dues yet? Or still abusing their forums to promote yourself while not paying? I see this article is now linked over there, so I am guessing the latter.

Posted by: Anon | May 23, 2008 5:40:53 AM

I agree with Rajiv that Forbes' analysis is flawed. I always thought that breaking out specialties in some industries but not others was an odd and biased approach. IP or bankruptcy practitioners are obviously going to be seeing figures quite different from those municipal attorneys encounter - and yet Forbes considers both to be "just" "lawyers." However, I would tend to doubt one writer's ability to break out every industry by specialty, and further doubt one's ability to analyze each independently. Perhaps the result is simply because doctors publish more of their specialty numbers than other industries, although I personally can't speak to that. Regardless, it wouldn't be difficult to improve the current organization. While still imperfect, I would think distinguishing professional industries by degree (JD, MD, DDS/DMD, PhD, etc.) and then breaking out others along bright functional lines (CEO, engineer, pilot, trader, etc.) would give a fuller picture of the playing field.

Posted by: Brendan | May 23, 2008 11:18:19 AM

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