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My sister-in-law is a PA, and I'm friends with several others. I have no idea what you mean from the suggestion that PA's have lower status than any of these other people. Maybe because some people confuse them with medical assistants, but people who don't know the difference aren't among those whose opinions I care about. A lot of them end up being PAs not because they couldn't cut it as doctors, but because doctors themselves warned them against med school. The option is going to school for 4 years after college, spend another 4 years working ridiculous hours for poverty wages, and finally get to be a real doctor some time in your 30s. At this point you're in so much debt that the higher salary only allows for the kind of lifestyle a normal college grad would have, not that it matters anyway, because you're still spending all your time at work.
And who is exactly looking down on PAs anyway? I'm a lawyer. I don't know what you do exactly, except that it's in finance, but unless you're in senior management I'm going to go ahead and pull rank here. I don't sit in some sad fucking cubicle or worse, some trendy-looking open office. I have a private office—an actual private one, not one of those manager offices with the window or frosted glass door that's expected to be open unless you're on the phone or discussing something sensitive—that's almost large enough to include a sofa and has sports memorabilia and custom photo prints on the walls and a large picture window with a view of a forest. I have my own secretary, and an army of paralegals will stop what they're doing if they're needed. If I need something printed I call someone else and have them bring it to me. I get printouts of most things because my work space cannot be limited to two screens. I have a bookshelf full of binders I prepare for each case (I'd have someone do this for me, but I don't trust them to not fuck it up). I have people send emails on my behalf, and people stop by my office with stuff for me to sign. I don't do anything that could be conceivably described as "real work". 90% of my job is drafting informal memos that aren't assigned by a superior or even directed to anyone in particular but are simply placed in the file for my own edification and so there's a record of my thoughts in case another attorney needs to look at the case. Most of my actual time is spent looking through documents and pacing my office thinking about things so I can make a decision. The only supervision I deal with is case assignments and who is covering depositions and court appearances, if there's a scheduling issue there. I don't deal with project managers assigning me work and emailing me every five minutes.
Beyond work, I live in a 3-bedroom house in an upscale area that's filled with toys I use on the weekends pursuing expensive hobbies. So please tell me who exactly I'm supposed to be looking down on. A guy who runs a crane in a steel mill? A video editor? The owner of a dog grooming business? A low-level financial analyst for a large company? A schoolteacher? A mechanical engineer? An audiologist? A registered nurse? A college professor? An accountant who does asset valuations? The guy you call before you dig? A middle manager for the IRS? The guy who works for a large bank who's described his job to me several times and I still don't know what he does? These are all friends of mine, and I could go on, but this gives you an idea of what my social circle looks like. There are no doctors or lawyers I regularly see socially, though my cousin is a Worker's Compensation attorney. I don't know anyone, even among lawyers, who engages in the kind of ostentatious spending that's meant to signal status. I know people who are really into things like craft beer, but that doesn't correlate with income. I personally drink High Life and Coors Banquet as my regular quash. I don't think PAs are below me. And I'm not one of those unrealistic egalitarians who think that I'm everyone's equal; I wouldn't date a girl who worked at McDonalds (or, realistically, one who didn't have a professional job), but that's about as far as it goes for most people. I don't ask what people do for a living before I decide if I'm going to be friends with them.
There are no gradations of lawyers in the US. Once you pass the bar you're allowed to handle anything any client is willing to give you. You might not exactly be qualified to do so, but all the ethical canons say about that is that you have to familiarize yourself with the relevant law. Medicine, by contrast, has actual board certified specialties that require specific training.
Cool comment (seriously).
In your opinion what is the area of law that is at the optimization frontier for raw compensation and intellectual gratification? I have friends who do legal advisory work for the big banks, and they make crazy money, but they kind of hate everything. On the other hand, I know a guy from church who does small to medium local business law, fucking LOVES it, and makes more than enough money (though not Christmas-in-Aspen money). I have an older family friend who spent her whole career in family law and is now emotionally broken and sorta-kinda broke financially.
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Oh! Oh! What kind of toys?
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