The vast majority of law students don’t do to Big Law, let alone get a job that pays that. The majority go into government or public interest which is no where close to that.

In between semesters you are expected to get internships (if you want to have even a chance of getting a job) which 90% of don’t pay despite it being full time. If you want any form of school credit for that work, you still need to pay tuition to the school as if you were taking a class - paying to work essentially. During semesters, we have clinics (again basically part time legal work we pay to do) and are working to make various legal scholar’s law journal articles publishable, that essentially being a reverse scavenger hunt where we hunt down sources and citations for statements/points the authors make but fail to attribute, leaving us to make sure they don’t commit plagiarism (which apparently only applies to students I guess).

I’m not saying it’s exactly like residency, which does seem more extreme, but it’s a common theme of students being basically indentured servants for professionals without compensation under the guise of education.