Jurist Doctors: These physicians went to law school for new challenges
Established physicians who go to law school are seeking new challenges and opportunities—ranging from facing the demands of law school to earning new credentials to starting a new career. (Image from Shutterstock)
For years, Dr. Geary Yeisley found life as a cardiothoracic surgeon exciting. It was meaningful and invigorating. But after 20 years of doing approximately 300 major vascular operations annually and being on call 24/7, he wanted a change. At 53, he realized performing lengthy surgeries had been more fun when he was younger, and he was tired of missing out on his kids’ milestones. He craved more time not focused on work. So he became an attorney.
Established physicians who go to law school are seeking new challenges and opportunities—ranging from facing the demands of law school to earning new credentials to starting a new career.
There are 20 combined MD/JD programs, according to Association of American Medical Colleges. But some doctors wait until after their medical board certification before heading to law school. Law School Admissions Council data shows between two and three dozen established MDs matriculated to law school annually from 2013-2023.
As the number of online and hybrid law schools has grown in the past seven years, some MDs are taking advantage of the programs’ flexibility, according to deans of those schools.
“Anecdotally, I would say at least 5% to 10% of our students and alumni are health care professionals, including more than a few surgeons,” says Martin Pritikin, dean of Purdue Global Law School.
Being an older student with various life experiences brought meaning to legal classes, Dr. Geary Yeisley says. “Property, contracts, corporation law—it was fascinating,” he adds. “I could think of how those laws and cases would apply to me.” (Photo by Bob Watts Photography)
‘Smarter than the attorneys’
Motivations vary. When COVID-19 put a halt to elective surgery, Dr. Tobias Mattei, a neurosurgeon at St. Louis University, found himself with time on his hands. He’d always received requests for quality review of potential legal cases. After being called as an expert witness at a few depositions “which seemed a little bit scary,” he was driven by intellectual curiosity to dive deep into the law and head to law school.
This year, he will graduate from Syracuse University College of Law’s JD Interactive hybrid program, he says, and continue his medical practice.
“I just wanted to be smarter than the attorneys I was dealing with, to make sure I could understand the framework” of legal cases, says the spinal cord specialist who has a few patent applications. “Very few doctors, especially neurosurgeons, have this special knowledge.”
When a private procedure center considered a new policy that would mandate an anesthesiologist handle any case that a cardiologist decides to perform in an outpatient setting, Dr. Maureen Czick, an anesthesiologist in New Haven, Connecticut, was angry.
“It’s a bad idea—dangerous,” she says.
Other doctors, like cardiologists, are not trained to use anesthesia medications like Propofol and don’t know the potential dangers for serious complications if used for high-risk cardiac patients in outpatient locations with less equipment, fewer rescue medications and lack immediate access to some testing and treatments, she says.
“Only anesthesia providers are trained to understand what these drugs do,” she says. “Only anesthesia providers should make the decision whether or not a patient is too high risk to be anesthetized at an outpatient center.”
Her protests to superiors that “high-risk patients, like matches and gasoline, should never meet” fell on deaf ears, she adds. “So, I decided I’m going to take the LSAT.” She now is a 1L at Quinnipiac University School of Law’s part-time program.
“The legal profession has the ability to connect to sources of decision-making in a meaningful way,” says Czick, who plans to leave medicine. “Health care is being managed not by people who were providers, but businesses people who don’t know medicine. I see law as the language doctors don’t speak.”
Doctors who become lawyers can bridge those differences, says Matthew Fisher, partner at Hancock, Daniel & Johnson and ABA Health Law Section chair.
“A physician who gets a law degree may be able to help physicians and lawyers overcome preconceived notions of the two professions being at odds as opposed to trying to work together towards a shared goal,” he adds.
Dr. Juantina Johnson’s job as chief medical officer of Indian Health Service for the Nashville, Tennessee, area is focused on compliance. “It’s about making sure we’re following the rules, and what I found was that a lot of attorneys don’t have a lot of knowledge as it relates to health care law,” she says.
Missing puzzle pieces
Dr. Juantina Johnson’s job as chief medical officer of Indian Health Service for the Nashville, Tennessee, area is focused on compliance. “It’s about making sure we’re following the rules, and what I found was that a lot of attorneys don’t have a lot of knowledge as it relates to health care law,” she says.
Although Johnson’s board certified in four areas in medicine, she is now a student in St. Mary’s School of Law online JD program.
“I’m missing pieces to the puzzle,” she says. A law degree will bring an understanding of how to practice law effectively as it relates to medical malpractice and allow her to better train others about documentation, she adds.
Dr. Amanda Higginson, a pediatrician in North Carolina and a U.S. Navy veteran, decided to use the GI Bill to attend law school and help her in her current job. “Why not use it on something interesting?” says Higginson. She graduated in December 2024 from Syracuse University College of Law’s JD Interactive program and plans on taking the North Carolina bar exam in February.
She sees her new degree as a way to be more precise with identifying issues, understanding and implementing policies in her current job as associate dean for student affairs at Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.
“Our office handles all of the policies surrounding the medical students,” she says. “I view those now in a slightly different way, in terms of the language used.”
Back in the classroom
Despite being accomplished students, sometimes physicians need time to adjust to being students.
“Legal education and medical education are, pedagogically, exceedingly different,” Higginson says.
Dr. Mattei agrees.
“As physicians, we’re very data driven and very methodical. We discuss statistical significance, evidence-based medicine,” he adds. “When you go to law school you still have that strictness, but it’s a very different framework. The Socratic method is not something we did in med school.”
While law school brings a significant workload, its intellectual challenges counterbalance the physical demands of surgeries lasting 8 to 10, hours, he adds. “It’s a nice refresh to go home and study patent law.”
Being an older student with various life experiences brought meaning to legal classes, Yeisley says. “Property, contracts, corporation law—it was fascinating,” he adds. “I could think of how those laws and cases would apply to me.”
But things had changed since Yeisley had been in the classroom. The first day of law school, as he was sitting in the front row taking notes on his legal pad, “I heard this clicking behind me,” he says. “These young students were taking notes on their computer. And then I found out everybody took their exams on their computer—that was a bit of a transition for me.”
Because of their full lives, participating in activities outside of the classroom can be challenging for doctors. Mattei, who serves as an editor at a few medical journals, took a pass at law review. Higgenson, meanwhile, found time to work at Syracuse Law’s veterans’ tax clinic.
Board certified vs. entering the bar
The physicians note that the process for getting licensed as a physician is very different from becoming admitted to the bar.
“It’s interesting to me, the timing of the bar exam after graduation and the reliance on an external bar prep course to review,” Higgenson adds.
In contrast, medical licensing exams are a series of tests, with the first typically taken after the second year of medical school. “You’re still in the curriculum. You have a lot to review, but it’s pretty time adjacent,” Higgenson says.
The second typically comes after the first clinical year, and the third, which requires a degree from a medical school to take, comes during the student’s intern year, she says.
Johnson notes that physicians must retake their exams every 10 years. “Once you’ve passed the bar, there is no taking the bar again,” she adds.
Still, there are similarities in licensing processes—especially the pressure to pass.
“I wasn’t nervous about the bar exam until I heard that the percentage pass rate was a little bit lower than I had expected,” Yeisley says. “I didn’t think of the possibility that I would not pass the bar exam and what I would do then.” He passed the first time.
But knowing he’d successfully passed his board certification exams and his dental career secure, Dr. Michael Kaner says he felt less stress taking the bar exam than his law school peers.
“I actually walked into the third day of the bar exam whistling, and people looked at me like they thought I was crazy,” he says. “I knew the pressure and what it entailed.”
Doctor or lawyer?
Since Kaner graduated from Concord Law School, a forerunner of Purdue Global Law School, he has maintained his dental practice four days a week. But Fridays are devoted to work that uses his law degree, he says, like lecturing on risk management, forensics and opioid prescribing; conducting independent dental exams on workers compensation cases and forensic dentistry; along with working with organized dentistry on pending legislation.
“I’m more of a dentist. But when people ask me, ‘Are you a lawyer as well?’ I’ll say, ‘Absolutely,’” he adds.
Once Yeisley passed the bar, he let go of his established medical career to become a lawyer. He now is a medical malpractice attorney at Kline & Specter.
“I know what questions to ask, and that gives me an advantage over the other attorneys,” Yeisley says. “I know the medicine better than they do.”
Often, families of patients often have a misunderstanding about what occurred in the patient’s care. “Often there’s certain information missing,” he says. “When I ask those unanswered questions, it helps in evaluating a case and deciding where we’re going to go.”
He’s glad he made the move to law.
“The big difference is I never get called in the middle of the night, which is huge,” he says. Yeah, there’s long hours in law, but it worked out for me. I enjoy what I’m doing now.”
However, how he identifies himself depends on who he is talking to, he says. “I like to think of myself as both a physician and an attorney,” he says.
“But, I usually just introduce myself as Geary,” he adds.
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
