There is a big difference between doctors and lawyers.

I have multiple physicians in my family and two of my boys are lawyers (large firm corporate M&A types), so I have a pretty good feel for the differences.

If you go to med school and complete a residency (and likely a fellowship) you will not be poor. You will earn anywhere from a comfortable to sizeable income. My best guess would be from $150,000 to $1,000,000. It would be a real outlier to make less or more. And it would be close to impossible to make much more than $1,000,000/yr from simply practicing medicine in any specialty.

Law is different. There is no guarantee if you get a law degree and pass the bar that you will be able to make a living practicing law. There a lot of legal jobs that pay less than $150,000/yr. So there are plenty of law school graduates that are worse off than even the lowest paid physician.

But the upper end in law is vastly different from medicine. Partners in big law can earn in the $1-4 million range routinely. There are positions in corporate law that earn in that kind of range. And of course, there is the possibility to make much much more through equity in businesses as in-house counsel.

The high end in law is much higher, and available to a much larger number, than in medicine.

Those earning in the upper ends of law, equivalent to higher paid physicians or more, have lives as demanding as docs. The hours worked and the pressure to deliver is as great, if not greater.

The complaints I hear for life in big law are very similar to the complaints I hear in medicine. The money is good, but the quality of life at work continues to degrade.