Breaking News, Dateline Washington -- the Butt Cheeks poster is, in fact, a GULC 2L.

FIRST!

3 = FAIL.

- blah blah (what is that, ninth or tenth time this month? already lost track. ahhhhh)

Semper five.

sweet grammar.

4 = "The classy thing to do would be not to call attention to it."
-Homer Simpson

elie you lazy slob, take one minute to fix your typos:

"but there is apparently a lot of competition of the job"

are you a professional writer? how did you manage to graduate from harvard? it's very simple to take one extra minute to proof your posts.

7 -- no can do. Hubris of saying first when not being first equals a required smackdown.

suck it GULC

Berkeley FAIL

8 - stop being a jackass and pretend for a second that you have friends who care about you.

This would never happen in Dallas or Fort Worth.

I like his response to the law student. If you read ATL too long you begin to think everyone works in BigLaw.

A LOT of people work to the top, and a LOT of BigLaw people fall to the bottom.

I'm neither top nor bottom (especially considering what this Long Island firm is offering), but there are too many students leaving school thinking they hit the jackpot by going into law.

MysTTTal, in no way, shape, or form is Suffolk nicer than Nassau. Patchogue is a white trash shit hole, as is most of Suffolk.

I love this guy. He sounds great. Believe it or not, 40k is market for a first-year at a small law firm outside a major city. To all the "how could I live..." posters, it's pretty simple:
1) you're probably part of a two-income couple;
2) you don't live in the most fashionable part of town;
3) you drive a used car;
4) you don't shop at Saks and you don't buy a new plasma TV;
5) you make the minimum payments on your loans (and you hopefully went to a law school that didn't set you back 200 grand);
6) you recognize that you will make considerably more in a couple years... the opening salary is more akin to a clerkship than a BigLaw job.

Too bad he didnt say anything about JD Underground and it's pathetic souls

BITCH, SPREAD THE CREAMY WHITE BUTT CHEEKS SO THIS ASIAN LAWYER CAN SMELL THE JUICY INSIDES!!!

WTF this is an incredibly boring story. What's next? How a Nebraskan sheriff ogled a bailiff's mistress? Come on!

"To all the "how could I live..."

Since when did this have *ANYTHING* to do with salaries?

You shouldn't have taken a three year vacation at a TTT.

This guy is actually very cool and honest about what legal life is for the VAST majority of lawyers. I give him a lot of credit for it... and I know several recent bar passers who'd absolutely kill to get a job paying $40K / year who I'll send the ad over to.

"To all the "how could I live..."

Since when did this have *ANYTHING* to do with salaries?

You shouldn't have taken a three year vacation at a TTT.

its hard out here...i really really wish he didnt put gulc as one of his candidates on craigslist.

Oh, please---what kind of damned psycho would follow up a help wanted ad with lengthy, specific responses to rejected applicants or trolls? Who would have either the time or inclination? I guess the same kind of Lawn Guyland douche who places a help wanted ad on Craigslist.

The salary isn't too bad - I saw a job on Northeastenlrn's job board this fall in Malden (shithole town outside of Boston) that paid a whopping $12/hour. No benefits, obviously. And you were required to have a car. Sadly, my Northeastern education set me back pretty close to $200k. Public interest law school my ass!

21- Your friends don't deserve any better. They probably graduated in bottom 10% of their class. Of course they kill for a job like that. No one else would take them.

The guy's response would sound a lot more professional if he didn't Randomly capitalize whatever words he happened to think were Important. I'm sure he's getting lots of resumes from Grads of good schools who worked at Big firms but didn't learn how to practice law there, and now want to work for this guy so they can learn from a master while eating his free Pizza.

I think Suffolk is nicer than Nassau. For example Port Jeff or StonyBrook.

It depends on what area of suffolk you comapre to what area of nassau, but overal Suffolk is better

16: You're in la-la land. Long Island is not some inexpensive small town in the Midwest. Struggling while being paid $40K is not because one insists on a new car, plasma TV, or living in the best part of town.

Hey guys - I'm probably going to send a resume to this dude, so you can stop submitting resumes, once he sees mine, he won't have any need for you.

Molto depressioso. I'm praying to the god of skinny punks that my BigLaw summer offer leads to a permanent offer. I cannot bear to think of having to resort to applying for (and apparently not getting) jobs like this.

16 - I think you need to add "live with parents" to your list of "how do I live on that salary" answers.

You live with your parents for four or five years after getting admitted, you pay down as much as you can on your student loans, you restrict your entertainment expenses to a trip to TGI Fridays once a month... and you get by ok on that kind of salary until you get enough experience to be of use to somebody to pay you actual money.

16 = finally a voice of reason in the ATL comments?

23, even worse than that, there were apparently multiple GULC applicants. Even UC Berkeley had just one graduate applying.

30 = Magna D-Bag

30, what happened to that specialty court in central Jersey clerkship? No love from your judge in setting you up at McCarter or Lowenstein?

you will make considerably more in a couple years... the opening salary is more akin to a clerkship than a BigLaw job.
__________________________________________

How would someone who starts their career working for $35k at some L.I. law firm be making "considerably more" in a couple of years? On what planet is someone working for 3-partner suburban firm the equivalent of judicial clerk in terms of the opportunities available to each? Why are you talking out of your ass?

So whats going to happen to all of these lawyers (esp recent grads) who are out there trying to convince the world to pay them for what is obviously not needed (other than bankruptcy lawyers)?

36 - The commute is killing me. I want something on the Island, but now I'm leaning back toward private practice. I am kind of flip flopping between law and finance, I still really want to go to Zarb, but it's going to be hard to get financing if the dislocations in the credit market continue.

26 -- That kind of arrogance serves Biglaw lawyers well in being the insufferable douches they need to be to make partner. It also makes you an insufferable douche in real life, though.

If they're "not needed," they won't be hired. Apparently, this guy does "need" someone, or he wouldn't be seeking applicants for this position; he would keep his $35k in his pocket.

Friday Pizzas? Man, skip the 'za and pay a few extra grand.

First off -- Nassau is better than Suffolk, hands down. The North Shore of Nassau is better than the South Shore (unless you consider Long Beach).

There are a number of decent sized law firms on the Island (75+ attorneys). When I finally find the inner fortitude to break out from my NYC shackles, I hope to land at one of those firms.

Post script -- I'm a bankruptcy attorney, so i'm money.

First off -- Nassau is better than Suffolk, hands down. The North Shore of Nassau is better than the South Shore (unless you consider Long Beach).

There are a number of decent sized law firms on the Island (75+ attorneys). When I finally find the inner fortitude to break out from my NYC shackles, I hope to land at one of those firms.

Post script -- I'm a bankruptcy attorney, so i'm money.

39, fair enough, best of luck to you.

Postscript, 43: you refer to yourself as "money" despite the fact that it is almost 2009, so you're a tool.

37 -- They won't have the same opportunities as someone coming off a judicial clerkship, but they'll certainly have better opportunities than they do now. This firm is offering $40K to hire a monkey. There's plenty of firms willing to pay $75K or so to lawyers with three or four years experience as monkeys. Being able to effective double your salary in three years constitutes "considerably more."

46

Being "money" won't go out of style. It will endure, just like my SNES.

46

Being "money" won't go out of style. It will endure, just like my SNES.

Yes--$75k is considerably more than $35k; now provide any evidence at all that someone who starts off working for some "firm" in L.I. for $35k will be making $75k in 3-4 years, or that any firm seeking a 4th-year associate will knowingly hire someone whose only experience is as a "monkey."

46

Being "money" won't go out of style. It will endure, just like my SNES.

The problem isn't the salary, its the student loans. There's too many lawschools charging exhorbitant tuitions on the (mis)representation that the student "may win the lottery" and get a Biglaw job, along with the ease with which the students were able to get loans for these exhorbitant sums. Also, most lawyers that have been out of lawschool for 10 years or more didn't have this problem. Tuitions weren't in the statosphere they are now.

Yeah, med-school students may have low-paid internships, but to my knowledge, the vast majority of them go on to pretty good paying jobs, well able to pay their loans. Not necessarily so lawyers, especially these days. There's a lot of good lawyers I know, who have been practicing over 10 years (and still paying off their loans because the borrowed to the hilt) and still only make 70-80,000. there's a lot of lawfirms that even with 3-4 years experience, will only pay a lateral without a book of business in the 50-60,000 range.

And while one can "get by" without the plasma tv and new car, lawfirms do require their attorneys to dress well, generally requiring a fairly expensive wardrobe of suits, shirts, shoes, dresses, etc. You can't pick up 'lawfirm' clothes at Kmart.

Basically, college students need to wise up that lawschool isn't the 'catch-all' post-graduate degree that's guaranteed to make money. One shouldn't go without sufficient funds and/or smarts. Perhaps if the number of lawstudents drops dramatically, most of those TTT lawschools will close and people subsequently graduating from the remaining lawschools won't have the huge debt making jobs like this uneconomically viable for most new attorneys.

30 = hofstra douche who can't make it

total fag

50 -- Happens all the time. Not everybody working in those midsized LI firms is a Biglaw refugee or first year who just missed Biglaw. A lot of those types of firms are just as willing to hire someone with three years of actual (albeit mind-numbing and achingly inconsequential) experience and ignore credentials as they are to hire somebody who was bottom 10% at NYU and couldn't land a Biglaw gig. As long as said TTT 3-4th year doesn't mind starting out at the same salary as NYU 1st year, they can very often get those jobs. And yeah, I know several people who fit that mold.

The problem is losers with no options and shitty jobs deciding to take a three year vacation at a TTT law school.

Ultimately the problem is that people with shitty jbos - secretaries, Bestbuy clerks, Admins and so on - don't want to accept their lot in life. They want to pretend like they deserve something more, so they hide from their reality by going to a TTT law school. Then when they're dumped back into the miserable life they came from, they get upset..

DEAL WITH REALITY. YOU'RE POOR.

Beautiful!

A lot of you bitches are soon gonna be applying to ads just like this! The party's over!

I know - it scares you to death to think about what'll happen if you lose your insanely inflated salary, and by extension, sense of self worth.

And the irony is that you ain't shit to non-biglaw employers - w/the small exception of those who truly specialize in niche areas. But for the most part, younger associates are worth nothing in the lateral world, especially for those w/no court experience.

So, I hope you fuckers are saving. And since so many of y'all come from outside NYC, you don't know what it's like to live in a real part of the city. You may not be able to afford Manhattanland anymore. I guess it's time to go back to the burbs and live with the folks.

56=embittered paralegal.

Reduction in Force, sweetie?

52 - You're probably the first person with any sense of reality. Only correction is that med school is probably a worse investment than law school these days. By the time you're done there, you've racked up around $225K-$250K worth of debt, and that's gonna have interest piling onto it for the first few years. Even worse are the folks who go to DO programs, who may not even see that.

The problem you discuss is the epidemic of the country's indifference to taking on debt. Trouble, as we're seeing now, is that reality sets in when you have to pay the piper. Perhaps when people (students, lenders, law schools, etc.) realize that a law degree isn't worth what people pay for it, the scenario you describe will come to fruition.

"I received resumes from Fordham Grads, Georgetown Grads, Berkeley Grad, Boston U and Boston College, Lots from St Johns, Brooklyn and New York."
???
I am afraid that if the GULCers or Cali hippies at my firm see this, we're going to have a mass suicide on our hands.

58&52: your points are excellent. my biggest worry is when smart people stop going to med school. we can deal with a few less lawyers, but certainly not docs

Ok, those of you who claim to know so much about small-law and mid-law: what is your advice for a 2L who has a summer BigLaw gig lined up but who also wants to prepare for the worst? How can I make myself as marketable as possible at this point?

60- do what I do every night (after working as hard as I can to please the partners)
PRAY that the firm's book continues to grow

-big law first year assoc, not yet laid off

5:1 odds Peter's last name is "Fung" aka 'The Claw'

This guy is a douchebag, plain and simple. I work in a *very* secondary (maybe tertiary?) legal market and I don't think even the smallest firms in town pay under 50k.

56 - Going back home and living with the folks ain't so bad =) My folks landed a giant mansion in surburbiaville at a foreclosure sale. I'd have an entire wing to myself, get caught up on all that "living" business I've been hearing about and not doing the past X yrs.

I started as a 1st year at a Nassau Co firm over a year ago. I commuted out of Manhattan on LIRR, most of our clients were in Man/Qns/Brook. I was offered $55k and settled at $65k to start with the promise of benefits and a bonus (neither of which I got, I was laid off a little more than one month after my health benefits were finally paid for...11 months after starting). I despised my job. The partners misrepresented things, reversed stories and accused me of all sorts of things that were untrue and certainly did not care about my "professional development" which they paid 0 attention too, It was certainly more than just the money which clearly beats $35/$40 that made me hate the job. It was livable, but barely, and I make minimum payments on my less than $100k in loans.

To put things in perspective: My first job out of undergrad was for the City of NY Law Dept as a paralegal. Once you became a union member you were paid $36K + every imaginable benefit, a pension, over a month off (2 weeks + i "floating holiday" + 1 sick day per month that accumulated + every federal and state holiday) and never worked past 5. Some OT was available. This was 5 years ago the job did not require a legal education. $160k is way to high for a 1st year attorney. If any of you think you are worth that before even being admitted you are sorely mistaken. That said, anything below $50k is impossible for anyone with a halfway decent law degree. Hell, NYS Unemployment Insurance pays out the equivalent of $20k. One would almost be better off deferring loans and interning for free at a public interest outfit that would give you a load of substantive experience. I blame the law schools a lot more than the naive, and likely not too bright students that think a law degree is worth anything. Its a sad reality for young attorneys. I went to a decent school, have about 1.5 years experience, law review published article, two internships, gov' experience and personal business experience and I can't even get an interview at a shit firm. I hope it gets better after NYE, but until then I will be happy that had the foresight to save some $ and make a few decent investment. I am sure all you BigLaw geniuses have done the same.

law is an awful profession and this is but one example of why. I wish I was doing just about anything else. I'd almost rather be flipping burgers.

I'm a New York Doctor who recently found this site. It's tremendously fun to see how savage lawyers can be to each other.

I'd like to reply to #59: Smart people HAVE stopped going into medicine. The incredible debt we take on and the complete lack of respect by patients, insurance companies, even nurses nowadays has finally started convincing people that medicine as a whole is not worth the effort.

If you look at medical school classes nowadays, you will see a dearth of white males and many, many more indians and asians (even more than in the past). It seems they are the last ones to get the message that medicine is not the field it once was.

I think our generation is ok in terms of having an adequate supply of good docs to go to; however I fear for our children's generation. I think the next generation of doctors will be the first who are not as competent on the whole as the previous generation.

NYMD

Hey ATL, how about doing an interview with a knowledgeable lawyer on dealing with student loan defautl?

Hey, NYMD - are you implying that Indian and Asian doctors are somehow inferior to white doctors?

69, not just the Asians and Indians, but 67/NYMD also expressed concern that there are fewer white _males_ and thus more women in medical school.

Obviously the medical world's gone downhill since the medical schools started letting _anyone_ in. Even the nurses don't respect a guy like him anymore when they don't seem too happy with the gentle open handed slaps on the butt.

The partner is greedy and wrong - he is just trying to rationalize the low salary he is offering.
Lets take a public sector job as an example:
My friend bombed the LSAT and became a teacher
She makes 55,000
AND IS UNIONIZED (extremely hard to get fired)
AND has the whole summer off
AND has all types of other benefits such as incredible insurance, etc....
AND has no law school debt

In contrast this guy is offering 37,000 to someone with NO job security, after 3 years of loans PLUS LSAT PLUS Bar exam, etc.....

This can only be described as a disequilibrium in the market if we draw the inference that a 38,000 job in the private sector is worth about 28,000 in the public sector.

This individual is essentially offering marginally above unemployment insurance. The person who said taking unemployment is the better option is right. Working for 38,000 with 100,000 in loans is poverty!!!

"are incapable of relaxing ... neither is your landlord." You're doing this on purpose.. admit it.

8 - Geez, SHUT UP about the typos and get a life. This isn't a frikkin' law review note. It's a blog.

"are incapable of relaxing ... neither is your landlord." You're doing this on purpose.. admit it.

40k? what a rancid toilet.

40k? what a rancid toilet.

MysTTTal, do the world a favor and out this toilet

40k for a lawyer? your average high school drop out makes more than that

MysTTTal, can you do a post on biglaw layoff suicides? I'm a first year with 150k debt, and if I get laid off, kill self is my only option. I know I can't be alone on this.

Believe it or not, $40k a year is not impossible to live on (outside NYC). It sucks, but it can be done. Moreover, if you bust your ass, develop yourself professionally, and get some good experience (i.e. actually try cases, take deps, argue motions, etc.), you can move beyond that into a better job. It worked for me, it can work for you laid off Biglaw refugees too.

"The salary we are offering reflects accurately what we can pay, after factoring in the rates we can charge for a junior attorney, the value that an untrained attorney brings to our practice, the amount of time my partners and I will lose training and reworking their work, the amount of time we write off ."

From what my UK colleagues say, Practical Law Company, will deal with the time partners spend training up the junior attorney and the majority of the work that has to be written off. Therefore, don't despair - the salary should go up to a lot more than $40k!

67 - suck me. You probably - like the vast, vast majority of doctors - went to some shit state medical school.

If you did not go to Harvard, you don't deserve respect - you stick your fingers in ASSHOLES for a living you freak, and you want respect????

16- yes, yes, keep them on the hook. Your salary will go up after a few years, ha!...or...you can just keep hiring newbies for grunt work for less and less. Eventually, they will just show up for free pizza and experience. Awesome.

I'll say one thing, I am going to actively discourage my kids from going to lawschool. There's just as many other careers out there that will earn substantially the same amount of money with 1/10 of the loan debt (if any, if I can help it). Sure there's likely a lot less of a chance to be a millionaire by being an x-ray tech or a teacher, but there's a lot more of a chance to live without crushing student loans.

82- When your lifestyle catches up with you and painful sickness is in your immediate future, I'm sure you'll change your tune about doctors. Just like lawyers have to pass the bar, doctors have to pass the boards. Ivy schools are almost nothing more than a designer label for your bosses to pimp you out with. Also, when you need that rectal tumor removed, you will be begging for a doctor to stick not just a finger in there, but a knife. Happy Trails Bitch.

71 et al:
I think what this guy (thinks he is) offering is an opportunity. Obviously, $40k is peanuts, you can't really live on it in Nassau unless you rent a cardboard box in Hempstead (on the wrong side of the tracks). But seriously, most of you seem to be looking at it from a law student's perspective. Imagine you're an unemployed lawyer right now (maybe even one who is married and whose spouse has an income). What you would want to be doing right now is practicing LAW. not becoming a teacher, not delivering pizzas. You would want to find a way to beef up/diversity your resume in this down market so that when the economy gets better you would hopefully have more options. Whether or not this $40k monkey job turns into anything bigger and better at this particular firm is not the issue. It's finding something productive (or at least something that appears to be productive) to do in this horrible economic climate, so that you can start to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps when things start to turn around. The guy at this firm knows that there are many, many people who find that to be an attractive proposition, and hence he can offer 40 thousand peanuts.

85 - sorry about your tiny pink medical fetish bro

87- That's your inspired response? All this time I imagined you were a weak lawyer, your obviously brilliant.

86- is right

This is supply and demand. If you had the ability to pick up a legally-educated employee for peanuts, who would be afraid to quit or be fired because of the economy, you just made yourself an amazing bargain! Basic economics. It's the same economics behind buying foreclosed homes and shorting stocks.

This guy is just playing the legal market, and apparently scoring an associate for about 20k below market rate. A++ dude.

I just cannot believe for a second that a real MD would ever read this site. Seriously.

This guy is just playing the legal market, and apparently scoring an associate for about 20k below market rate.
__________________________________________

Because he said so? You are seriously gullible.

91 - Because there's tons of '08 (and a few '07) grads who haven't had an interview in months and have no hint of a job at all... yeah, I'd imagine he'd easily score an associate for that pay (although it's not $20K below market -- market in small firms like this for new attorneys is about $45). I know at least one '07 grad who works three days a week for a solo for $12.00 an hour and bartends a few days a week to have the money to pay off loans (no rent since she still lives with her parents). And I know people five or six years out of law school, in their early 30's, who still have yet to crack $50K / year. He won't have a problem finding an associate.

Biglaw associates (and, worse, law students) who think that the entire world is Biglaw are in for a rude awakening the second pink slips start going around in the spring.

A few years ago I was offered a totally crappy $40k job at a small Manhattan firm and had to turn it down because my private loan company actually wouldn't let me lower my maximum monthly payment. That made me soooo unhappy with my loan company (and it's a major one), but with the market as it is right now, refinancing is nearly impossible (I tried, even though I don't need the cut anymore, just out of anger). Plus it was a crappy job.

I now work at an excellent Nassau Co. mid-sized, 80+ attorneys, that pays great (I'm well over $100k as a fourth year). Some of our attorneys are from the city, and some are from other, smaller Nassau Co. firms. It's definitely possible to move up. I also reverse from Brooklyn, and that works out too. So I lucked out.

For what it's worth, another Nassau Co. firm, that was about 15ish attorneys, offered me $65 a couple of years ago, which I also turned down, for non-monetary reasons. So $40 is low but certainly not unheard of, especially for very small firms and especially in this economy. But if you can't lower your loan payments, it can be torture, if not mathematically impossible. It just depends on your situation.

If you don't think that is a good salary then do not apply there.

Is this guy going to get a HLS grad, probably not, but most of you are not HLS grads.

For the vast majority of real lawyers this is not a bad place to start.

Not only is this a rancid job but I bet this guy will want you to own a vehicle so you can dart all over the 8 counties around NYC to closings, depositions and client meetings. What scum? You can make more working as a paralegal! Or a doc reviewer for just monts a year!

to the doctor post...

Med school has never been for the "smartest people". The smartest people don't practice the lowest form of thinking as a profession, also known as memorization. Thats what 90 plus percent of medicine is for most doctors. The smartest people are solving bigger problems and are more often going to be top scientists and engineers. Get over urself. Doctors treat patients like crap and all others who are not doctors. Once the cash is gone, so is the fake altruistic cloak used to cover ur ass. Doctors are all about greed, dont care about appointments, think nurses and the whole hospital should bow down to them. Well fuck u. Asian and indian docs are just fine, we need more of them. Ur time is up dickface. No more 500K for looking at film for 5 minutes and declaring something is broke.

A fucking drug rep with a bachelors degree gets more than 40k. A drug rep from LSU public white trash college I might add. Screw this dude and his shit job. Just go be a drug rep and beat out the other barn animals u compete with.

Wow, lots of hostility towards doctors here! I am indeed a real, practicing MD. I came across this site after some lawyer friends commented about it.

Did I mean to suggest that non-white doctors are inferior to white doctors? Not inferior in knowledge per se, but bedside manner, yes. Are woman doctors inferior to male doctors? No on both counts, but woman tend toward the fields better suited to lifestyle so actually the more woman in medicine, the fewer docs who are willing to go into fields requiring arduous training and long hours (think surgical fields).

The day of docs making a million bucks for doing nothing is over, I agree. MDs can still make very good money, but it requires more hours than ever before. In my field, the upper limit of compensation is high 6 figures with median being $300,000-$400,000. Not too much to complain about.

I will tell you this, medicine is NOT, and I repeat, absolutely NOT about memorization. That is just the starting block fr omwhich you learn the language of medicine; much like you learn all the details of all the important cases throughout american legal history. Memorization is for nurse practitioners and physicians assistants. They never go beyond that. They learn to memorize that a constellation of symptoms equals a diagnosis. Doctors think differently. We use a concept called differential diagnosis that as far as I know is unique to medicine. It requires that you us all the facts in front of you to rule in or rule out different diagnoses. It's actually the most rigorous intellectual endeavor you can partake in because it is a constantly evolving train of thought.

To illustrate, think about a patient coming into the hospital with fever and abdominal pain. There must be over 200 different diagnoses that it could be. We don't check every one of those diagnoses out one by one; that would take forever and waste resources. We ask ourselves questions like: where is the abdominal pain? Does it come and go? are any abdominal organs enlarged? what brings the pain on? What makes it better? What is the fever like? Does it spike every day? Twice a day? Are there chills? Then, we examine blood tests, scans, etc and are constantly refining down what the most likely diagnosis is. Then we offer treatment and pray it works.

So you see, medicine is not really memorization. And yes, you need really smart people to do it well. You want a smart doctor taking care of you should you ever get sick. A smart doctor is exponentially better for you than an adequate doctor, much more so than a very smart lawyer is better for you than an adequate lawyer.

o.k. I've written enough. By the way, lawyers do indeed get the worst care in the hospital, not because they get the least attention. In fact it's opposite, they get the most attention and most tests ordered for them so we can cover our asses. But time and again has proven that the more tests we order, the more things we find that are meaningless, the more we are required to delve into those finding by ordering more tests. My advice to you, don't tell a doc you're a lawyer, you'll get much better care.

NYMD

98, what you call "the most rigorous intellectual endeavor you can partake in" regular people call process of elimination using a flowchart. You either _memorize_ the flowchart, or use a book/computer.

And the so-called non-white doctors usually grew up in America and have better bedside manners than you, for example by not suggesting that certain races have inherently worse manners than others.

#98 - ME knows practicing doctors, too !!1!one!
Medical *school* (first 2 years) is all memorization. The later years (after USMLE step 1) actually involve clinical rotations and what not.

As for crappiness of bedside-manner in foriegn-born physicians -- that has more to do with the culture they come from. A lot of third-world nations have ignorant populations practicing 'folklore' medicine. Sometimes the prospective doctors that come out of that environment end up with confrontational attitudes to deal with those kinds of patientsm, because they deal with them, A LOT OF THEM, on a daily basis (especially my Indian friend who studied in India. Some of the stuff he saw there was disgusting.) If their bedside manner toward American patients is as you say, then I agree with you, they shouldn't be practicing medicine here. But every profession has its organizational inertia -- unless he/she does something grossly incompetent (repeated malpractice), it's unlikely he'll get fired.

As for american-born (or amiericanized) non-white doctors, I really didn't see a marked . Perhaps you should make a distinction between foreign med-students coming here (to USA) for residency program only, vs. Americanized immigrants who went through american education system, and normal med-school admission process.

High six figure salary? You're not in California, I guess (or you work for on eof those manged-care organizations.) The average compensation here in CA is somewhat lower than you'd expect (compared to CA's higher cost of living). -- higher competition due to the 'desirability' of location (i.e. more would-be doctors wanting to settle in California vs the boonies.) Even the medicore residency programs are more selective due to higher application load (and the top-flight Californai residency programs are practically cutthroat competition.) That said, partners in private practice can develop a practice to sustain those salary levels.

As for women taking 'softer' specializations, unless human biology/biotech changes, allowing couples to push childbearing onto men, don't count on that changing anytime soon. If I knew I planned on having a family at some point, and I wanted to stay in the career, and I could pick a med-specialization with (roughly) 8-5 hours (like CNT, podiatrist, dermatologist, etc.), I WOULD BE STUPID NOT TO GUN FOR THAT FIELD...

At least women in medicine have that choice. (...At the big HMO employers in California)

Woman up for partner at BIGLAW, and wants to take a 'leave of absence' for childbirth, HAHAHAHAHAHAH, laughed right out the door (along with her partner papers!) Anyone here on this board can confirm that for you!

#99 - There is nothing offensive about pointing out certain CULTURES (not races) have different social norms. The practice of medicine in some (non-Western) cultures is distinctly different from Western norms. There are positive and negative aspects to each -- though obviously I have a western bias.

# 99 you are an idiot! First off, if you think medicine can be boiled down to a flowchart and use a process of elimination or a computer to find out the diagnosis, you should go visit your neighborhood robot doctor next time you get sick.

And it seems you are not actually familiar with the expression "bedside manner". It actually has very little to with manners and more to do with interpersonal interaction, putting the patient at ease, being able to inject humor into an encounter, knowing when to speak and when to be silent and many other intangible, indescribable qualities that can not be taught. Yes it is my opinion that even american born indian and asian doctors do not have the same interpersonal rapport with the patients. Perhaps it comes from their upbringing; the tend to be more respectful and reserved. I'm not saying it is bad or wrong, it is just different, not as jovial, not as disarming. I've found that most patients appreciate when I try to inject some humor or lighten the mood during a visit.

Think about it: most people are fiercely loyal to their favorite physician not necessarily because they think they are a walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge, but because they feel better after having a visit with the doctor. That doctor can put their mind at ease, explain something to them that they are worried about, essentially communicate with them like one human being talking to another. That makes a good bedside manner and that's what Im talking about.

NYMD

101, computers are already used for differential diagnosis. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2699592?dopt=Abstract
In a few years, a trained non-doctor and a computer can do all your precious differential diagnosis about 99% as well, at a tiny fraction of the cost. You know how socialized medicine will create huge incentives for the government to reduce costs?

Sorry about your future obsolescence bro.
But I'm not sure I will shed a tear since you seem to think that all Indians born and raised in America are inferior doctors compared to the same kind of person who happens to be white. Because only white people can communicate with patients "like one human being talking to another."

101: cut the bullshit. Doctors memorize it all and 99% of the time have a hunch based on experience as to whats causing the problem. Like some jerkoff radiologist is going through this amazing reasoning process to diagnose, or even better a GP. U can convince the dumbass general public ur smart but not others. I sat and watched a bunch of premeds piss themselves in organic chem while the Chem Engineers spanked them and had thermo and multivariable calc at the same time. Those same premeds are now docs and are still fags who just work like dogs instead of solve real problems. Noone here is impressed. Most rigorous hahah what an idiot. Go memorize more stuff please and keep ripping off the public.

NYMD - Good comments, however probably wasted on people that are bitter they became JD's instead of MD's. I'm sure your quite use to giving good advice to just have people be non compliant. Happy New Year.

104 = hofstra grad

#102: great research skills pulling out some obscure article fom an oral surgery journal from 1989. I've said it before, those of you who think that medicine is practiced cookbook style and that anyone can be good at it should be sure to go visit any ordinary physician when they actually get really sick. Don't bother looking at the Best Doctors list, go right for the first name on your insurance list. I guess it's not your fault for thinking docs don't do much but spit back out memorized facts - you haven't really experienced any sort of serious illness yet in life. I hope you don't experience any serious illness where you'll need a really good doctor to save your life, but something tells me some of you will at some point. Everyone will unfortunately.

I think it's not possible for me to explain to a bunch of lawyers how the way doctors think is vastly different fromt he way you think. Am I wrong in saying that in your practice of law you are faced with a problem and you consult the law (as written down somewhere) to see what the correct interpretation is. Someone slips and falls - well what does "the law" say about who's responsible and what they owe the person for their injury? Someone breaks a promise as codified in a contract? Well what does "the law" say about what to do in that case. I'm sorry and no offense to you guys because I know that lawyers are important in this world, but what makes you think that anything you do is so special? Couldn't an idiot savant like Rainman memorize every single law and statute on the books, every single case decision out there and do your job better than you could? Couldn't a computer do what you do better than you can? I really don't get it - where's the critical decision making here?

#103 you seem to really have it out for radiologists, huh? Do you realize how incredibly difficult their job is? Do you understand that it takes 5 years of training for a radiologist to get good enough to interpret the mess of images that comprise a CAT scan or MRI? Do you realize how incredibly important it is to be good at that? How the astute interpretation of an image like a breast mammogram can pick up an early breast cancer and save a woman's life? Would you be brazen enough to not care who's reading your mom's or your wife's yearly screening mammogram? Would you call that radiologist a trained monkey? How about the pathologist who's trying to determine whether that mass they biopsied on your thyroid gland is benign or malignant? Still think that doctor is just spitting back memorized facts?

to the doc...

if the radiologist sees something on the mri he/she becomes concerned, next comes the biop if possible then the blood tests and still noone knows. Just like a geologist looking for oil under clouds of gas and salt miles under the earths surface he can never be sure. If u think that deserves the rip off prices charged well there u go. It doesn't. Tests help determine malign or benign, its been done for a long time. once again, u can convince the general public u are smart thats about it. There are other professions outside the publics interaction that require much smarter people than u. And once again, get over urself and ur self serving profession.

Professional musicians probably comprise the most intelligent profession. A large portion of the 'successful' professional musicians consider $40k a good year, too. There's more to life than this, you sad collection of narcissists.

You get what you pay for. This guy is only hurting himself, and the firm he supposedly "works" for. Most people hired at that slave wage will harbor less than helpful or positive feelings throughout their tenure at such a firm, this without a doubt is no bargain in the end, the firm only ends up shooting themselves in the foot, to save a few bucks. Shame on them for trying to take advantage of the shitty economy.