@Hypocrisy_Central – the problem is you’re assuming success as a lawyer as well as a doctor. You haven’t really included whether it is more or less likely for one to successfully get and retain a job or clients as opposed to the other. If it is more likely that one has steady employment with increasing compensation over life than the other, that could balance the factor of school investment (in terms of time and money) of the other – or enhance it.
For instance, top firm jobs are limited. Local legal practices depend, in terms of profitability, on the type of cases that come to it. Whereas a visit to the doctor can generally be determined in terms of time beforehand by the physician, the standard legal consultation is difficult to predict in terms of hours of work it produces. Further, doctors don’t need to be paid directly by their clients, as medical insurance offsets price…and therefore people are more likely to go to doctors regularly. People have to pay for attorney consultations whenever they go, and therefore only go when they think there is a problem. Attorneys often work without pay and on contingency, in which case they will not get paid unless there is a favorable outcome…and could spend a lot of time working for nothing.
The problem with claiming that it’s better pound for pound is that there are many variables that haven’t been taken into account, and because of the variables associated with each individual case it seems that a ranking system wouldn’t be predictive in any individual case.