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Law School is a sham

Les Grossman said:
This is 100% accurate where I practice, as well. You can count on one hand how many lawyers still do med mal. The insurance companies have undoubtedly won the tort reform battle. Yet, malpractice premiums continue to rise? I thought it was all the frivolous law suits that caused malpractice coverage to rise? Or, maybe it was all b.s. and a way for insurance companies to not pay on legit claims and continue to collect more premiums.

As for the ER doctors, where I live, claimants face an even tougher standard to prove malpractice than they would against a specialist. An ER doctor has to commit something greater than even gross negligence to be found liable.
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It's just a coincidence that under our fee for service model, the ordering of huge numbers of tests also results in increased income for the institution doing the testing - which is either the hospital that employs the doctor or in some cases the doctor ordering the test who owns his own lab. I'm sure that has absolutely nothing to do with the explosion of unnecessary testing. It's all the fault of the lawyers.
 
Les Grossman said:
This is 100% accurate where I practice, as well. You can count on one hand how many lawyers still do med mal. The insurance companies have undoubtedly won the tort reform battle. Yet, malpractice premiums continue to rise? I thought it was all the frivolous law suits that caused malpractice coverage to rise? Or, maybe it was all b.s. and a way for insurance companies to not pay on legit claims and continue to collect more premiums.

As for the ER doctors, where I live, claimants face an even tougher standard to prove malpractice than they would against a specialist. An ER doctor has to commit something greater than even gross negligence to be found liable.
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Many of our MDs up here in NJ are going down to Texas post-residency because of the same tough standards that have passed there - especially for ER. Burden of proof is very difficult for the patient and as you said, the physician needs to have exhibited more than gross negligence.
 
P4nthers11 said:
I went through the same exact thing. I think going to Wake undergrad and then sticking around down south for law school helped, but in every interview I still had to do the song and dance about not wanting to go back up north. After working in Charlotte this past summer it seemed to me that the entire damn city is full of transplants. Even the kids I knew at Wake who were from Charlotte their parents usually had moved there for work.
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Its funny because not being from NC really wasnt an issue for me. I think I made it very clear that I was staying here, but it maybe also helped that I didnt interview until after I had passed the NC bar exam. You'd think that choosing the state to take the bar in would be a pretty good indicator that you're planning to stay in the state. Most interesting to me now is that my firm is hiring, and the biggest hang ups with one of the potential candidates is that she moved to Charlotte after graduating, and they are worried she's going to be headed back there in a year or two. I didnt have any real connection to Wilmington when I got my job, but it almost helped that I'm not from NC because I didnt have family drawing me elsewhere.
 
The apples to apples comparison between UNC and UT killed my wife in a lot of interviews too. Especially since so many people she interviewed with were UNC grads.
 
bojanglefunk said:
The apples to apples comparison between UNC and UT killed my wife in a lot of interviews too. Especially since so many people she interviewed with were UNC grads.
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You mean UNC grade thought overly highly of themselves?
 
Law school is such a fucking joke and this is coming from someone who's graduating in a few weeks, has less than 100k in debt due to in-state tuition and scholarship money (lol like that's some sort of win), and has pretty much the exact job I want lined up (small-ish firm, decent pay and benefits, good people, whatever). Being a lawyer is pretty much the opposite of whatever you think it is and no one really knows that until you're here, unless you did some serious planning after undergrad to figure that out. Anyone who did that planning and still goes to law school - you're probably the small minority of people who actually should be in law school.

I just hope I'm not banging the keyboard in these threads 10 years from now.

Oh and I actually like what I do/what I will be doing, but that's because of sheer luck and the ability to stay positive, not because I knew what I was getting myself into.
 
KitchinDeac said:
BacktoBack: where do you practice? I assume not NC. The tort reform lobby has won the medical malpractice fight in NC. Ridiculous pleading requirements, expert requirements, and limitations on damages, and the jury pool being poisoned with the idea that NC has a doctor shortage because of lawsuits, has causes many firms (including mine) to all but eliminate medical malpractice as a practice area. The number of medical malpratice lawsuits filed in NC (both per capita and absolute) has been on the fall, and the number of doctors per capita on the rise, for the better part of a decade. You will also note from the link that lawsuits almost always result in a defense verdict. http://ncaj.com/file_depot/0-10000000/0-10000/9208/folder/18824/2011MedMalReport.pdf
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You are correct that I do not practice in NC. I have no first hand knowledge of these things. But I certainly hear a lot about it from friends around the country. Some places are better/worse than others. But there is certainly a component of practicing medicine that requires covering yourself for unlikely things. I can speak to another poster's comment by saying I get no financial incentive to order any test for a patient. I am in private practice and get nothing from the hospital except midnight phone calls from the ER. But I still order tests that I know are unlikely to show anything useful. Radiology has become the new way to cover your A$$. Blood work is relatively inexpensive but CT scans and especially MRI's run the meter up very quickly. It's a funny job sometimes and I don't know the right answers but I have a strong sense that what's going on right now isn't ideal.
 
So what's a normal amount of vacation time for you lawyers and doctors? Are you mired in jobs where you will never get more than 3 or 4 weeks off in a year or is the sky the limit?
 
BacktoBack said:
You are correct that I do not practice in NC. I have no first hand knowledge of these things. But I certainly hear a lot about it from friends around the country. Some places are better/worse than others. But there is certainly a component of practicing medicine that requires covering yourself for unlikely things. I can speak to another poster's comment by saying I get no financial incentive to order any test for a patient. I am in private practice and get nothing from the hospital except midnight phone calls from the ER. But I still order tests that I know are unlikely to show anything useful. Radiology has become the new way to cover your A$$. Blood work is relatively inexpensive but CT scans and especially MRI's run the meter up very quickly. It's a funny job sometimes and I don't know the right answers but I have a strong sense that what's going on right now isn't ideal.
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Dude, you clean wax out of people's ears. It's not like much can go wrong. ;)
 
BacktoBack said:
There are some fine NP's. For a lot of things the difference might not matter. But to think there is no difference between someone with 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency versus a BS in nursing and then a masters in NP is just wrong. The co-pay is the same ]- so you can bet I'll be seeing the family physician/internist.
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Co-pays are dying. Does it cost the same under an HSA w/a high deductible? I have no idea. If it does, I doubt it will in the future.
 
wake20 said:
Law school is such a fucking joke and this is coming from someone who's graduating in a few weeks, has less than 100k in debt due to in-state tuition and scholarship money (lol like that's some sort of win), and has pretty much the exact job I want lined up (small-ish firm, decent pay and benefits, good people, whatever). Being a lawyer is pretty much the opposite of whatever you think it is and no one really knows that until you're here, unless you did some serious planning after undergrad to figure that out. Anyone who did that planning and still goes to law school - you're probably the small minority of people who actually should be in law school.

I just hope I'm not banging the keyboard in these threads 10 years from now.

Oh and I actually like what I do/what I will be doing, but that's because of sheer luck and the ability to stay positive, not because I knew what I was getting myself into.
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The part about no one really knowing WTF lawyers do is a great point. And it's difficult to find out, either, since any attorney will tell you what THEY do ("Oh yeah, my insurance practice is great you'll love it!!!!").

If I had to start law school again I probably wouldn't have been so myopic about being a lawyer. There are other industries out there, like consulting, that actively recruit JDs now. At least at some of the top schools, the MBA and JD programs are really starting to merge.
 
I can't believe a lawyer on here would suggest that medical malpractice lawyers are a significant part of the problem and that such lawyers' practices are dissuading people from becoming doctors. It is the insurance companies, people! And the greedy doctors. That is like 92.5% of the problem with defensive medicine. If you learn from other doctors or your facilities or your "risk management team" that "the lawyers will get you if you don't order five tests" you are just being lied to in hopes that you will generate more money for the facility or the insurance company or whatever.

This is particularly true if you are in the South, and ABSOLUTELY true if you are in North Carolina. And if you are an ER doctor in NC and you get sued successfully for medical malpractice, you not only deserve to be sued, you deserve to be thrown in jail, probably for the rest of your life, and beaten and raped each day while there. Because it takes something that egregious for you to be successfully sued.

Tort reform rant over.
 
PhDeac said:
Much can go wrong.

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At the risk of publicizing my retirement plan, I've been wanting for years to modify one of those tube vacuums that dentists use to suck the water out of your mouth into something that goes up your nose and sucks the mucous out when you have a cold. Called the Snot Vac, of course.
 
As soon as a cokehead with a deviated septum vaccums out half his frontal lobe, call me, I know some good products liability defense folks.
 
ABCDeac said:
I can't believe a lawyer on here would suggest that medical malpractice lawyers are a significant part of the problem and that such lawyers' practices are dissuading people from becoming doctors. It is the insurance companies, people! And the greedy doctors. That is like 92.5% of the problem with defensive medicine. If you learn from other doctors or your facilities or your "risk management team" that "the lawyers will get you if you don't order five tests" you are just being lied to in hopes that you will generate more money for the facility or the insurance company or whatever.

This is particularly true if you are in the South, and ABSOLUTELY true if you are in North Carolina. And if you are an ER doctor in NC and you get sued successfully for medical malpractice, you not only deserve to be sued, you deserve to be thrown in jail, probably for the rest of your life, and beaten and raped each day while there. Because it takes something that egregious for you to be successfully sued.

Tort reform rant over.
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Nice - looks like we have another ambulance chaser here... THIS COUNTRY NEEDS MORE LAWYERS!
 
JGDeac said:
Co-pays are dying. Does it cost the same under an HSA w/a high deductible? I have no idea. If it does, I doubt it will in the future.
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When we were investigating the HSA with a high deductible, one of my first calls was to my doctors to find out the cost of an appointment. At my GP, the cost for a sinus infection is the same whether I see my doctor, a PA, or a NP.
 
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