Medicine or Law ?

Hey really random question although perhaps there are others in the same predicament. Ive had my heart set on studying medicine since yeat 11, and have taken a-levels that would best fascilitate that - as well as completing an EPQ on a medical topic. I've attended many online lectures about getting into med, chemical engineering, and new medical advancements in sectors like microbiology. I have put lots into the medical application process with my subjects, supercurriculars etc. Recently i've been looking into law as it's always something ive been interested in and I'm really struggling to decide. I love helping people and biology so medicine seems like a good fit for me, however I also enjoy debating in school and legal proceedings (as well as the much higher slaries). What do I do ? Do i go for med and regeret not doing law, and take the far lower wages. Or go for law and miss what I enjoy learning about most. I've looked into it and some people recomened taking the alevels you want and doing an undergrad in the course of your choice, and then do a conversion year post graduate going into law. This would then mean I'd have a medical degree and a law degree, would that work? Would I then be able to practice medical law? Any help / opinions / suggestions welcomed.
*If I am interested in doing med then law, would I have to be doing work experience for BOTH now in year 12 ?

Current Year 12 student in South London, taking Biology, chemistry, business, and geography for AS level - and then dropping geography for a-level. Also completed an EPQ on a medical topic.

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

10

Hey there, thanks for posting a question in the Medicine forum. :biggrin:

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Original post by JackNolan26

Hey really random question although perhaps there are others in the same predicament. Ive had my heart set on studying medicine since yeat 11, and have taken a-levels that would best fascilitate that - as well as completing an EPQ on a medical topic. I've attended many online lectures about getting into med, chemical engineering, and new medical advancements in sectors like microbiology. I have put lots into the medical application process with my subjects, supercurriculars etc. Recently i've been looking into law as it's always something ive been interested in and I'm really struggling to decide. I love helping people and biology so medicine seems like a good fit for me, however I also enjoy debating in school and legal proceedings (as well as the much higher slaries). What do I do ? Do i go for med and regeret not doing law, and take the far lower wages. Or go for law and miss what I enjoy learning about most. I've looked into it and some people recomened taking the alevels you want and doing an undergrad in the course of your choice, and then do a conversion year post graduate going into law. This would then mean I'd have a medical degree and a law degree, would that work? Would I then be able to practice medical law? Any help / opinions / suggestions welcomed.
*If I am interested in doing med then law, would I have to be doing work experience for BOTH now in year 12 ?

Current Year 12 student in South London, taking Biology, chemistry, business, and geography for AS level - and then dropping geography for a-level. Also completed an EPQ on a medical topic.

Hi @JackNolan26,

It is really hard to decide what to do with your career when still in A levels so don't feel that you are alone in this struggle!

The simple answer, is you could change to either career at various points in your life. For example, you could do a law degree and then do a second undergrad degree in medicine if after 3 years you decide you want to train to be a lawyer. Equally, you could do a medicine degree and then convert to law before training to qualify as a lawyer. Either would work, of course, both pathways have the downside of taking many years and incurring a cost as it is difficult to get loans/ grants for second degree.

Having said this, you can get a loan for your first undergrad degree and you can get scholarships for the conversion course (I am less certain on funding for doing a medical degree later on).

I would say, try and get some experience in both fields whilst doing your A levels so that you can work out what feels best for you and what you want to do. Then go with your gut and you can always revaluate and change later 🙂

I hope this helps!

Sophie

Reply 3

katana10000

10

Original post by JackNolan26

Hey really random question although perhaps there are others in the same predicament. Ive had my heart set on studying medicine since yeat 11, and have taken a-levels that would best fascilitate that - as well as completing an EPQ on a medical topic. I've attended many online lectures about getting into med, chemical engineering, and new medical advancements in sectors like microbiology. I have put lots into the medical application process with my subjects, supercurriculars etc. Recently i've been looking into law as it's always something ive been interested in and I'm really struggling to decide. I love helping people and biology so medicine seems like a good fit for me, however I also enjoy debating in school and legal proceedings (as well as the much higher slaries). What do I do ? Do i go for med and regeret not doing law, and take the far lower wages. Or go for law and miss what I enjoy learning about most. I've looked into it and some people recomened taking the alevels you want and doing an undergrad in the course of your choice, and then do a conversion year post graduate going into law. This would then mean I'd have a medical degree and a law degree, would that work? Would I then be able to practice medical law? Any help / opinions / suggestions welcomed.
*If I am interested in doing med then law, would I have to be doing work experience for BOTH now in year 12 ?
Current Year 12 student in South London, taking Biology, chemistry, business, and geography for AS level - and then dropping geography for a-level. Also completed an EPQ on a medical topic.

I suggest you pick the lifestyle that you see yourself having over the next 20 - 40 years, work out how much it would cost to maintain and pick your career accordingly. For example, you could be earning £200k as a commercial lawyer by your mid 20s in certain firms whereas you would be earning a fraction of that as doctor in the NHS. If money is a primary concern and you have the academics to join a top law firm, that is what I would go for.

However, if you love medicine as a vocation and don't care about a high paying career (at least in the short term) then follow your heart.

Medicine!

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by JackNolan26

Hey really random question although perhaps there are others in the same predicament. Ive had my heart set on studying medicine since yeat 11, and have taken a-levels that would best fascilitate that - as well as completing an EPQ on a medical topic. I've attended many online lectures about getting into med, chemical engineering, and new medical advancements in sectors like microbiology. I have put lots into the medical application process with my subjects, supercurriculars etc. Recently i've been looking into law as it's always something ive been interested in and I'm really struggling to decide. I love helping people and biology so medicine seems like a good fit for me, however I also enjoy debating in school and legal proceedings (as well as the much higher slaries). What do I do ? Do i go for med and regeret not doing law, and take the far lower wages. Or go for law and miss what I enjoy learning about most. I've looked into it and some people recomened taking the alevels you want and doing an undergrad in the course of your choice, and then do a conversion year post graduate going into law. This would then mean I'd have a medical degree and a law degree, would that work? Would I then be able to practice medical law? Any help / opinions / suggestions welcomed.
*If I am interested in doing med then law, would I have to be doing work experience for BOTH now in year 12 ?

Current Year 12 student in South London, taking Biology, chemistry, business, and geography for AS level - and then dropping geography for a-level. Also completed an EPQ on a medical topic.

I feel like your perceptions of what law involves are somewhat skewed and not necessarily reflective of the reality for most. You also seem to be missing key bits of information generally about the entire process.

Firstly, you don't need work experience to apply to a law degree. It may be useful for you personally to understand what is actually involved in working in a legal job (it's not debating all day - for most it's an office job, often with long hours. I would expect a lot of emails and meetings would be the norm) so you can better judge whether it is something you're actually interested in (rather than just attaching to the idea of the second career every teenager is aware of after doctor).

Secondly, lawyers on average do not earn more than doctors. Don't fall into the fallacy of thinking magic circle firm and similar salaries are the norm in the sector or representative of most law graduates first roles. Law graduates have fairly poor employment outcomes, I think less than half get a training contract after graduating (and far fewer will be at a big city firm offering the kinds of salaries you seem to think is the standard). Many will need to spend years working as a paralegal before they can get a training contract. The majority of solicitors do not work in large City firms and are more likely to work in regional branches or small and medium sized firms elsewhere in the UK - and the pay is considerably lower. Odds of getting pupillage for the barrister route are even harder as I understand it. Average salary for UK solicitors who aren't partners is £75k per year I believe, and less outside of London (considerably in some regions). You'll be earning more than that as a consultant in the NHS by comparison (even without factoring in potential for private work), and outside of a couple specialties once you begin training as I understand, you're basically on a conveyor belt to becoming a consultant and finding a consultant post somewhere. GP would be similar in principle although the pay structure is somewhat different.

For medicine, at present (although this may well be changing in the coming years if foundation posts aren't expanded to match the increased medical school intakes) you are effectively guaranteed a job after completing your medical degree, and thereafter have fixed yearly pay increases as you progress through training up until achieving CCT and becoming a consultant. I don't think there is any other job in the UK that can offer that kind of long term security both in terms of jobs being available (outside of a couple of specialties e.g. neurosurgery where there aren't enough consultant posts) and pay progression - maybe the civil service would be the best comparison but the salaries there are lower (balanced by better benefit schemes and a good pension scheme I understand). Plus you get an excellent pension scheme through the NHS on top of it. Obviously medicine does require a lot of personal commitment and resilience to get through it, but you aren't exactly going to be working better hours in a magic circle firm or similar anyway either so quality of life is only going to be better if you accept lower paid roles outside of London in most cases.

Thirdly, you don't need to do a law degree at all to become a solicitor and can just take the SQE after graduating from any degree. Even if you want to go the barrister route which does require a qualifying law degree, the conversion course is not a 3 year degree, it's a 1 year graduate diploma normally. So it's not exactly a huge time investment to "switch" potentially (whereas the other way around you would be doing a 3 year degree minimum to start with, then at best a 4 year graduate entry medicine degree).

Finally my understanding is you don't need any kind of specific qualification outside of being a qualfiied solicitor or barrister to work in medical negligence and similar areas. The background may be useful perhaps but fundamentally it's a field of law, not a field of medicine. Same for other areas where there may be some sense of overlap (e.g. working as a coroner) - it's ultimately a legal role not a medical one.

I would suggest you pick one thing and pursue it and see how it goes. If you decide against medicine once you finish the degree and your foundation post, then there's nothing stopping you transitioning to another career. You could of course do a law degree in the first place but since graduate entry medicine is considerably more competitive than standard entry medicine, and there's no guarantee of any job (much less a legal one, much much less a well paying legal one) on graduation from that degree, if you're otherwise invested in medicine and interested in it I can't really see any sane argument for not pursuing it first in this case.

(edited 3 days ago)

Reply 6

Scotney

20

A wise man and doctor once said if the choice is between medicine and something else ,do the something else.

Reply 7

UZIman123

6

Original post by JackNolan26

Hey really random question although perhaps there are others in the same predicament. Ive had my heart set on studying medicine since yeat 11, and have taken a-levels that would best fascilitate that - as well as completing an EPQ on a medical topic. I've attended many online lectures about getting into med, chemical engineering, and new medical advancements in sectors like microbiology. I have put lots into the medical application process with my subjects, supercurriculars etc. Recently i've been looking into law as it's always something ive been interested in and I'm really struggling to decide. I love helping people and biology so medicine seems like a good fit for me, however I also enjoy debating in school and legal proceedings (as well as the much higher slaries). What do I do ? Do i go for med and regeret not doing law, and take the far lower wages. Or go for law and miss what I enjoy learning about most. I've looked into it and some people recomened taking the alevels you want and doing an undergrad in the course of your choice, and then do a conversion year post graduate going into law. This would then mean I'd have a medical degree and a law degree, would that work? Would I then be able to practice medical law? Any help / opinions / suggestions welcomed.
*If I am interested in doing med then law, would I have to be doing work experience for BOTH now in year 12 ?
Current Year 12 student in South London, taking Biology, chemistry, business, and geography for AS level - and then dropping geography for a-level. Also completed an EPQ on a medical topic.

All the replies on here are really good so I will leave you with one thing: I have seen plenty of people online and in person who quit being a doctor and went into law surrounding medicine. I'm not sure of the pay or what its like, but I guess its a bit of both: you get to work as a lawyer on a field of expertise which is the medical field, helping people with financial or legal issues and advice surrounding healthcare. That might be something you could be interested in but make sure you fully research all your options before you make any choices you will regret

Reply 8

Vermillionred

3

Original post by JackNolan26

Hey really random question although perhaps there are others in the same predicament. Ive had my heart set on studying medicine since yeat 11, and have taken a-levels that would best fascilitate that - as well as completing an EPQ on a medical topic. I've attended many online lectures about getting into med, chemical engineering, and new medical advancements in sectors like microbiology. I have put lots into the medical application process with my subjects, supercurriculars etc. Recently i've been looking into law as it's always something ive been interested in and I'm really struggling to decide. I love helping people and biology so medicine seems like a good fit for me, however I also enjoy debating in school and legal proceedings (as well as the much higher slaries). What do I do ? Do i go for med and regeret not doing law, and take the far lower wages. Or go for law and miss what I enjoy learning about most. I've looked into it and some people recomened taking the alevels you want and doing an undergrad in the course of your choice, and then do a conversion year post graduate going into law. This would then mean I'd have a medical degree and a law degree, would that work? Would I then be able to practice medical law? Any help / opinions / suggestions welcomed.
*If I am interested in doing med then law, would I have to be doing work experience for BOTH now in year 12 ?
Current Year 12 student in South London, taking Biology, chemistry, business, and geography for AS level - and then dropping geography for a-level. Also completed an EPQ on a medical topic.

I'm entering graduate medicine for 2024 entry.

I would during the summer holidays get work experience in both - that way you now the day to day workings. For medicine try to get it with a medical doctor, and for law a solicitor/lawyer (specialising in the topics you like). Perhaps the day-to-day work is not as interesting as the topics themselves!

What you see on videos and lectures may be embellished versions to make the lectures more interesting. Biology and Chemistry are definitely good and required for many medical schools, also be aware of the grades you need to get for the unis you want to apply to.

Going in person is also advantageous for applications - especially medicine interviews. Thankfully you have time and this way you know for sure!

Best of luck!

(edited 1 day ago)

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