I’m afraid you don’t know much about the legal profession. Criminal lawyers are indeed under substantial deadlines and often great stress on behalf of their clients. Have you ever been wrongly accused of malpractice? Have you ever been put in front of the medical licensing board? Your livelihood is at stake and it is often a single attorney’s actions which determine the rest of your future as a physician.

And as you mentioned there is a great deal of range within the profession. The most tedious of lawyers are simply parsing a linguistic code and applying it to a specific case. Similarly, the most tedious of doctors are no more than well-trained mechanics. Neither deserve half of the money or prestige attributed to the exceptional practitioners of the same field.

The lawyer gives you your freedom, the doctor your life. I personally can not do without — and think as you will on Patrick Henry’s famous quote:

Give me liberty or give me death

Lawyers and doctors both have strict jobs that demand more out of them then they ever want to give. I am in neither profession so I do not have a biased but I believe doctors have a harder job out of the two.

Doctors are forced to deal with patients every hour of the day. Lives of people are always in the hand of the doctor. Justin mentions “Give me liberty or give me death” but their suspects are alive after court cases. Patients could die if there is a problem in the Operation Room.

Lawyers work hard and long hours to provide freedom to their clients. They are always going over contracts and evidence to contradict the opposing argument.

Lawyers keep people free. Doctors keep people alive.

My vote needless to say is Doctors. Doctors have a harder job than lawyers.

I do not get why we are talking about doctors and lawyers here. At least after these cases they are alive and functioning regardless of the outcome! People at the center of these cases are PEOPLE, with lives and families and people who love them. YES everything should be done that is humanely possible to restore them to a somewhat level of functioning, ONCE EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DONE the person is no more - not on this planet anyways.

I completely understand the position of Mrs. Shiavo’s parents. I can’t bare to think about what they went through for all those years - I sampled it for 14 weeks and almost lost my mind - those poor people. You want so badly to believe that the person is going to be OK. Once the person actually looses conscousness the same feelings as death sets in for the loves ones. Has anyone ever heard about the stages of grief? Anyone ever heard about denial?

For me it was 7 years ago and I can look back now with much clearer thoughts. I wanted my wife to live so bad that I would have also kept her alive no matter what condition she would have been in. Let me ask you one question: HOW FAIR WOULD THAT HAVE BEN TO HER? Do you think she would have wanted to live like that? Of course she would have chosen life - BUT NOT LIKE THAT!

I’m glad that Mr. Shiavo had the ability to let his wife go and not live as a vegetable. And for those who talk about him being with someone else - HIS WIFE HAS BEEN GONE FOR 12 YEARS - should he live as he is also dead? I didn’t date for over 4 years after my wifes passing and believe me I didn’t really want to and only did so after much convincing by people who cared about me.

The right thing happened here, I would not have said this 7 years ago, but after having so much time to reflect I am glad that he had the ability to let his wife move on and the power to move on himself!

Your whole argument is premised on the assumption that all lawyers are corporate lawyers, or work for big firms. You also don’t seem to recognize how great and complex the legal needs of people living in poverty in this country are. And your commenters are right to bring up criminal lawyers but there are also a whole bunch of other lawyers providing essential legal services that are not criminal. I am a public interest lawyer, as are most of my friends. We represent people caught up in the criminal justice system (who are overwhelmingly poor and minorities, and often mentally ill), we represent victims of employment discrimination. In my case, I represent prisoners who are abused (sometimes to death, but in the best of cases, before that can happen), and people with disabilities who have lost the ability to work and are being screwed over by their insurance companies when it comes to long-term disability benefits. We get paid at most 1/4 what our friends in firms make, it is (for perverse reasons) more competitive to get a job in our field, and we also get paid far less than doctors. And in fact, what we do does affect people’s lives in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it is life and death, sometimes it is the ability to have shelter, to have access to benefits for food, to maintain ties with your family, to earn a living, etc.

I’m not suggesting that lawyers are “more important” than doctors. If forced to choose, I might choose doctors, but I don’t find the question particularly interesting or useful. I just want to make it clear that you are talking about a particular type of lawyer and a particular type of client, and you may well be right when it comes to them, but your comments suggest a real blindness to the experience of people living in poverty in this country and the extent of their powerlessness in the legal system without the work of public interest lawyers.

I’m a prosecutor, busily catching up all those minority and mentally ill people in the criminal justice system. I roll out at least two nights a week on search warrants, and after 18 years on the job I’ve reached my maximum salary of $92,000.

I had no idea I was so much better off monetarily than an 18 year experience doctor!

Seriously, I do my work because I love it. There’s more to satisfaction than a pay check, and I’ll never complain. If I wanted to do something else that paid more, I would. I suspect there are few doctors who quit, because most of them don’t doctor just for the money.