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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op here. My argument is as follows-

JD is more intellectual than MD  [b]Nope, have you taken the MCAT and the LSAT?[/b]
JD has much higher salary potential  [b]I suppose, if you're referring to the very few who bill at $1000+/hour.[/b]
JD is much more versatile - the prestige speaks for itself in many industries [b]Neither are very versatile, but JDs are very limiting, which I don't think is true of an MD.[/b]
JD ceiling is higher - Supreme Court justices have no medical counterpart near as prestigious [b]Judges are more prestigious than lawyers, that's true.[/b]
JDs in big law get car service, catered lunches, and suits - MDs have cabs/trains, cafeteria, and scrubs 
JDs are sole in their ability to practice law - MDs have DO and foreign competition [b]Lawyers are now competing with foreign competition.[/b]
JDs charge by hour - MDs have to deal with government dictated reimbursements [b]Why do you think lawyers invented the billable hour?  It was to compete with doctor's salaries.[/b]

How are docs more prestigious?[/quote][/quote]

Re competing with foreign competition, is that for doc review?[/quote]

It's doc review, and many other things:

The range of secretarial and administrative services provided by offshore back office operations is growing by an estimated 20% annually as developed countries seek to lower costs by outsourcing routine office functions. Legal secretarial tasks outsourced overseas include data entry, proofreading, legal transcription, simple filings, cite-checking and remote secretarial services.

Litigation Support Functions

The advent of e-discovery and changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have encouraged the offshoring of high-volume, labor-intensive litigation support functions . In fact, litigation support functions are the bread and butter of many foreign legal service vendors.

In lieu of paying armies of high-priced U.S. attorneys and paralegals to code and review millions of discovery documents, highly trained workforces overseas perform the work at a fraction of the cost. Typical litigation support tasks performed by overseas legal service providers include imaging, scanning, coding, abstracting, indexing, data entry and document review.

Lawyer Functions

The work of lawyers is not immune to the offshoring phenomenon. Overseas legal service vendors are performing sophisticated legal tasks formerly reserved for high-priced U.S. attorneys. Technological tools such as the internet, electronic legal research, e-mail, text messaging and remote document retrieval make it easy for lawyers to communicate across the globe. Complex legal research, due diligence, contract management and negotiation, appellate briefs and research, and intellectual property services are among the legal tasks being exported to low-wage markets, where attorney rates are as little as 1/30th the cost of U.S. lawyers.

Paralegal Functions

Legal processing outsourcing is also making an impact on the paralegal industry. In India and other low-cost markets, paralegals earn between $6 and $8 an hour, compared with the $20+ an hour earned by their U.S. counterparts. A study at the University of California at Berkeley cites the paralegal field as one of the top occupations most at risk of being outsourced abroad.

In the beginning, the types of paralegal tasks outsourced were primarily low-end, high-volume work including deposition summaries; document review; electronic discovery; document organization, summarizing, indexing, categorizing and abstracting; document imaging, scanning and coding; and routine research such as multi-jurisdictional surveys.

As offshoring gains momentum, more sophisticated and complex paralegal tasks are being sent overseas such as complex legal research; contract drafting, monitoring and review; business research services such as reviews of SEC filings and corporate financial research; and drafting of legal documents such as legal memorandums, pleadings, briefs, discovery requests and jury instructions.

http://legalcareers.about.com/od/jobmarket/a/Offshoring.htm[/quote]

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