Should I become a doctor or a lawyer?

[caspar99]

I will be beginning my junior year in high school in about a month. I think it's an appropriate time to pick a career path, this way I can take courses to further develop skills that will be needed in university as well as in my future career. I've considered a lot of careers but i'm really interested in law and medicine. If I were a lawyer my primary interest would be criminal law, and I would complete my bachelor's degree in criminology. If I was a doctor I would probably do something related to pediatrics, such as pediatric oncology or rheumatology.I know what i'm getting myself into 7-8 years of formal education plus 4 or more years in specialization and clearly plenty of debt. I've researched for various years now. So I want to know what kind of attributes should a person have to study law, and what attributes should someone have to pursue medicine? Both careers are vastly different, and I'm trying to pick a career that I will get a personal satisfaction from but also that it suits my personality. I'm very intelligent (fluent in two languages), hard worker, analytical, strong minded, a bit stubborn, go getter, quick to think on my feet, friendly, and many more qualities but that's just a bit about me. Please give me some feed back, thanks in advanced!

[madison86]

The prep for these two jobs is pretty different, a there's no such thing as a pre-law major, and criminology really has nothing to do with it. Law school admissions, at least in the US, are primarily based on your college GPA and especially your LSAT score. Your college major isn't terribly important. After a few years of law school, you take the Bar Exam for your state, and that determines if you can practice law or not. Medical School is different, you are in the learning phase, between medical school proper, residency, rotations, etc, much long than a lawyer is in law school.
Generally, there is much lower demand for lawyers right now than doctors, and a lot of recent law school grads have difficulty getting work. Most would recommend not going on that career path now. An important part of getting a job after Law school is the Rank of your Law school, the profession has a very organized ranking system, and you really need to be at a top tier school, a lot of people have been attending lower tier schools and finding that they can't get hired.

Medical School is also extremely competetive right now, and in order to stand out, you'll want excellent grades in biology courses, with a heavy concentration in anatomy courses, the more the better, and the more labs the better. You'll also want to try to get some research experience, luckily most college professors, especially in the sciences, are also researchers and they're usually pretty happy to have motivated people help out in their lab. Since you're still in high school, you'll want to try to do this anyway, at a local college or hospital, and also you should volunteer at a local hospital so you can get a feel for what this sort of work really involves.

Basically, in terms of education, in addition to the above recommendations, you want a broad general education that will let you do lots of things.

[iden]

The prep for these two jobs is pretty different, a there's no such thing as a pre-law major, and criminology really has nothing to do with it. Law school admissions, at least in the US, are primarily based on your college GPA and especially your LSAT score. Your college major isn't terribly important. After a few years of law school, you take the Bar Exam for your state, and that determines if you can practice law or not. Medical School is different, you are in the learning phase, between medical school proper, residency, rotations, etc, much long than a lawyer is in law school.
Generally, there is much lower demand for lawyers right now than doctors, and a lot of recent law school grads have difficulty getting work. Most would recommend not going on that career path now. An important part of getting a job after Law school is the Rank of your Law school, the profession has a very organized ranking system, and you really need to be at a top tier school, a lot of people have been attending lower tier schools and finding that they can't get hired.

Medical School is also extremely competetive right now, and in order to stand out, you'll want excellent grades in biology courses, with a heavy concentration in anatomy courses, the more the better, and the more labs the better. You'll also want to try to get some research experience, luckily most college professors, especially in the sciences, are also researchers and they're usually pretty happy to have motivated people help out in their lab. Since you're still in high school, you'll want to try to do this anyway, at a local college or hospital, and also you should volunteer at a local hospital so you can get a feel for what this sort of work really involves.

Basically, in terms of education, in addition to the above recommendations, you want a broad general education that will let you do lots of things.

I prefer you do your job as a doctor. But remember, it's about you. It's your life; its your choice whether you want to be a doctor or a lawyer but in point of view, i think you should be a doctor.
It doesnt matter if you have to study so many years to be a doctor buts it seriously worth it..

Remember when you want to be a lawyer or doctor and the attributes you want to take/do depends on you because there is different types of doctorsand lawyers for doctors:

anaesthetics
general practice
medicine
obstetrics and gynaecology
ophthalmology
paediatrics
pathology
psychiatry
radiology
surgery (including dental surgery)

Find out what each type does.
I hope this helped you and i hope you be successful in your career.