Very often, one of the fringe benefits of being a Type A smarty-pants is that you don’t have to bother with the paradox of choice. From early on, maybe even before you apply to schools for your bachelor’s degree, you stand before a fork in your potential career path, a law degree or medical school. Maybe your problem-solving skills have put engineering and finance somewhere in the mix too, but, in the end, you’ve dismissed them as middling career prospects. If you’ve opted for scrubs instead of a law firm, take heart. You’re on the right track. Here are some of the reasons why it’s better to become a doctor instead of a lawyer.

1. Strong Job Outlook

The projected physician shortage everyone keeps talking about is no joke. Just ask the Association of American Medical Colleges, whose research determined a shortfall in the medical field of up to 90,000 doctors. A significant number – labor statistics suggest 12,500 to 31,100 – of that shortage will be primary care physicians. The federal government agrees. Growing awareness about this need bodes well not only for communities, but Caribbean medical school graduates, who will have great job security because go into primary care more than any other area of medical care.

2. Job Satisfaction

As a growing chorus of voices suggest, the law firms have a growing number of disaffected and unhappy lawyers within their ranks. For most lawyers, practicing law starts with years and years of long hours and difficult situations, which is now understood as a major contributing factor for anxiety, chronic stress and substance abuse. 

Check out this study that the American Bar Association and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation published in the Journal of Addictive Medicine. The study concluded that people in the legal profession could “experience problematic drinking at a higher rate than other professional populations. Mental health distress is also significant.”

3. As a Law School Graduate, Your Career Path Leads to Big Law

Yeah, yeah, we know—corporations have been people for years now. But at 7, after your parents were done quizzing you with LSAT flashcards and you finished your Cocoa Krispies, did you really daydream about finding loopholes for agribusiness conglomerates? A future in law looks more like Suits than To Kill a Mockingbird or Erin Brockovich. If you are considering becoming a doctor, you can be sure that your work will help people, which is a driving consideration for most doctors.

4. People Will Like You More if You Become a Doctor Instead of a Lawyer 

However undeserved, practicing law is held in much lower esteem by the general public than those who practice medicine. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by Gallup responded that they would rate “the honesty and ethical standards,” of a medical doctor as “Very high/High.”