• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

How much do Doctors and Lawyers get paid?

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Mark R said:
Some specialists on pre 2005 contracts may be paid for 50-70 hours, and this way they could get £150k, due to seniority. New hires aren't going to get anywhere near that level. Yes, it really is like that. My senior mentor does the same job as me, works the same hours as me, but I have a 40 hour contract and he has a 60 hour contract!
Click to expand...

This would be it then, my mum, and uncle were all employed in hospitals since around the 80's and my dad in 1999, and retired last year. Explains why they have/had higher wages then 🙂
 
vshah said:
makes me happy that my wife has a full ride + stipend to med school & grad school thanks to MD/PhD.
Click to expand...

My wife is a hospital pharmacist and thinks about med school every now and then. But then she goes back and does the math. 4 years less school, no major need for malpractice insurance, no goofy call hours. She gets paid for her overtime. Her paycheck isn't directly as affected by law and insurance payouts. And she makes about 80% what a typical non-specialist MD does. It's not a bad gig.
 
Law school is an absolutely huge gamble.

Basically to make the big money you must go to a top ten in the country school AND graduate in the top 25% of your class. If you go to top ten and don't do top 25% you can still get a decent job but not the big firm job. Or you go to a tier 1/2 school with a regional reputation and graduate in top 1% with law review experience. There are exceptions to these rules but they are few and far between.

Also a huge number of people enter law school planning on doing some kind of low paying but socially just job but the reality of the huge debt you've now picked up means you'll likely end up in the best paying job you can possibly get just to keep the loans in repayment.

In addition to that the skills to succeed in law school and the skills to succeed as a lawyer aren't necessarily the same. Loving law school is no indication that you will love practicing law.

I don't know much about the medical field but I do know at least one coworker whose wife is doing a residency and she has realized that she doesn't really like the practice of medicine but has no choice but to finish and work in the field to pay off the $300k in debt she's picked up. Apparently she greatly regrets the time/effort/cost of the whole endeavor.

Long story short if you asking about doctor vs lawyer I can't fathom you've been thinking about what drives you and much more so are thinking about prestige and when you do that expect to be disappointed.
 
vi edit said:
My wife is a hospital pharmacist and thinks about med school every now and then. But then she goes back and does the math. 4 years less school, no major need for malpractice insurance, no goofy call hours. She gets paid for her overtime. Her paycheck isn't directly as affected by law and insurance payouts. And she makes about 80% what a typical non-specialist MD does. It's not a bad gig.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but does she like her work? Plus a specialist (in the US or other places) might make several times what she makes. Mind you, the hours would probably suck, although it depends on the specialty.
 
jaedaliu said:
I think tighter control is on the number of residency spots available. I think there are more graduates each year than there are residency spots. I may be wrong. There are international residents that may be displacing some US candidates. Regardless, there are med school graduates that don't get placed into residency.
Click to expand...

yes, there are fewer spots than graduates, but there are still spots that go unfilled.
 
vi edit said:
My wife is a hospital pharmacist and thinks about med school every now and then. But then she goes back and does the math. 4 years less school, no major need for malpractice insurance, no goofy call hours. She gets paid for her overtime. Her paycheck isn't directly as affected by law and insurance payouts. And she makes about 80% what a typical non-specialist MD does. It's not a bad gig.
Click to expand...

definitely, pharmacy is a great career.
 
Zeze said:
This is such a general question.

A general physician (first time doc after all schooling + residency) makes $80-150k. But it's nothing when you're swimming in debt and have been in school for many many years. When you go for specialty (which is another 5-10 yrs), that's when you make big money.

Whoohoo, guessed it perfectly.

Same for lawyers. It's an oversaturated market. Only the top 1% of class will work for big firms and make bank. The other 99% of the class will become mediocre lawyers or ambulance chasers.

I know plenty of people that make good money just with bachelor's degree + climbing corp ladder vs all that time you spent in law/medical school.
Click to expand...

At Stanford, it's more like 250k starting off. At least that is what a friend of mine told me who is a Director at Stanford Hospital.
 
Eug said:
Yeah, but does she like her work? Plus a specialist (in the US or other places) might make several times what she makes. Mind you, the hours would probably suck, although it depends on the specialty.
Click to expand...

Most of the time yes. She loves her work. But there are days when hospital administration or the culture on particular units she works on are maddening and the opposite of appropriate patient care.

She'd have the same problem, if not even more of them if she were an MD. Sure she'd have more freedom over therapy, but then she'd be playing a different game with insurers and lawmakers that would drive her even more insane.
 
zoiks said:
At Stanford, it's more like 250k starting off. At least that is what a friend of mine told me who is a Director at Stanford Hospital.
Click to expand...
1. If you get hired at Stanford as a full-time staff physician, you often are not just your average physician.

2. It depends on the field. An ophthalmologist will usually start off way higher than a general internist, for example.

http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2012/public

fig2.jpg
 
zoiks said:
At Stanford, it's more like 250k starting off. At least that is what a friend of mine told me who is a Director at Stanford Hospital.
Click to expand...

I have a couple friends who are physicians at Stanford, primary care docs there start at around 130k unless they're pulling in huge research contracts. The Anesthesiologists are making about 300k to start, in general, academic physicians make about 25% less than private physicians.
 
Eug said:
1. If you get hired at Stanford as a full-time staff physician, you often are not just your average physician.

2. It depends on the field. An ophthalmologist will usually start off way higher than a general internist, for example.

http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2012/public

fig2.jpg
Click to expand...

I guess. But I know that they get paid a whole lot more than I do. That's all that is clear to me. I know a lot of people at Stanford who are directors and research scientists. They all make mega bucks.
I should have been a doctor. My wife is a pharmacist but her entire extended family is a doctor of some sort. All her cousins here, her aunts, uncles and their families; every single person is an MD of some specialty. I was extremely surprised to find one of her long distance cousins to be an Engineer but he was the exception. They do work hard but I can tell that they get paid very nicely.
The perk that I have is that if I need medical advice on something, my wife just calls one of the cousins to get their feedback on it right away.
 
madoka said:
Hmmm. . . doctors average out at a little more than $300K. I would have thought it was more than that. I guess the grass is always greener.
Click to expand...


Not exactly sure how you came to that conclusion since only a few specialties average over 300K and the ones that employ the most people are all under 200k.
 
madoka said:
Hmmm. . . doctors average out at a little more than $300K. I would have thought it was more than that. I guess the grass is always greener.
Click to expand...
Less than $300000. Remember, family docs often make well under $200000. Pediatricians don't get well paid either. There are a heluvalot more family docs than orthopedic surgeons or ophthalmologists.

EDIT:

Slew Foot beat me to it.
 
Slew Foot said:
Not exactly sure how you came to that conclusion since only a few specialties average over 300K and the ones that employ the most people are all under 200k.
Click to expand...

I should have clarified my statement and said, "the highest paid doctors average out at a little more than $300K."
 
Just like for lawyers, "averages" for doctors are probably deceiving (what does partner of group that has lots of junior associates billing alot more than they are paid and excess profits go to senior partners make?), and would probably need to know median, distribution curve of average incomes for various subsets of any given specialty, and correlation between different seniority status and type of practice they are in. Plus probably not adjusting average income downward for standardized 40 hour work week when making apples to oranges comparisons to average salaries in other fields.

Somehow I suspect for alot of specialities, if solo practice doctor's income is really based upon what they bill (actual services that person provides him or her self) minus their expenses, many fields salaries won't look as great as those "averages" suggest.

Plus those doctors weren't really earning money during years in medical school and residency, and lots of students loans to pay back, so there is opportunity cost of choosing pathway that requires more years of training vs. going into workforce right out of college.

OP should being thinking more about stability of job and it's defensive nature in economic downturns, vs. I'm going to get rich in this profession or that one. If you are personable and people / patients really like you, I would guess that dentistry might be more profitable (cash only business and don't have to accept insurance).

What junior associate lawyer earns vs. senior partner makes can be very, very different.
 
Last edited:
preCRT said:
Med school grads who didn't match applied to programs in which they had no chance.

And there are residency programs so awful they can only attract grads of foreign med schools.
Click to expand...

There were over 200 US trained Physicians who did not match into residency programs last year. Did not match at all. When someone doesn't match a residency (for instance in your example because they shot too high) they scramble into another residency. Last year 200 Med Students from United State based Medical Schools DID NOT MATCH. That is 200 doctors thrown out to do research and generally waste a year of their life. There has also been a ridiculous decrease in FMG's (foreign medschool grads) and Caribbean/For-Profit Graduates. In 1997 there was a freeze of funding for residency programs. Since then there has not been a truly "new" residency spot opened in the US. We have almost added 50% more medical students who are produced each year. There is going to be an implosion of the system any year.. just a matter of time. Don't be surprised if "resident" hospital don't start coming back in vogue where the poor and un-insured are guinea pigs for the untrained and unsupervised. I lucked out. I matched in a highly selective/highly competitive field. It is everyone after me who is fucked. Also, GP's do 3-4 year residencies. Internists do the same. Surgeons do 5-6 years. Specialists do another 2-3 years on top of that. All of that is getting paid about 40-50k a year with zero benefits for about 80hrs/week. I would make more working hourly at Lowes. Pharm Company dinners are now basically unheard of. So are all the free pens. Because that mattered.
 
Good to see pediatricians get paid the least. Ever since I was little I always complained that anyone could do their job. Their nurse has a harder job than they do.
 
zoiks said:
At Stanford, it's more like 250k starting off. At least that is what a friend of mine told me who is a Director at Stanford Hospital.
Click to expand...

Jobs at Educational centers don't pay as much as a private practice doc.. Those Stanford guys make all their money off of the research they do and the bank them make as lecturers. Their practices are more things they do to fill their days.
 
The OP doesn`t come across as the type that would make a good Doctor or Lawyer if he has to ask such a question here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top