Law and Medicine: Not As Cool as They Used To Be?

That’s the basic question posed by this interesting piece, currently the most emailed article on the New York Times website. After describing some of the sufferings of lawyers and doctors today, Alex Williams writes:

[I]n the days when a successful career was built on a number of tacitly recognized pillars — outsize pay, long-term security, impressive schooling and authority over grave matters — doctors and lawyers were perched atop them all.

Now, those pillars have started to wobble.

“The older professions are great, they’re wonderful,” said Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life” (Basic Books, 2003). “But they’ve lost their allure, their status.