A simple rule is to avoid, if at all possible, personality types that make you anxious and nervous. Some students will claim to study 24 hours a day and talk about nothing but law. Although their claims of great scholarship are of dubious validity, these types can nevertheless make you question whether what you are doing is adequate, even though you are fully prepared and studying as hard as you reasonably can. It is better to avoid these types entirely unless you can limit your contacts to mutually helpful arrangements involving note-sharing and other activities of reciprocal benefit (a doubtful proposition). You simply do not need the extra stress of worrying about whether you should be losing sleep doing unassigned reading. If you do a good job on the assigned reading and make judicious use of appropriate study aids, you need not worry about whether you are studying enough.
Another type of student with whom you may have an unsettling encounter is the man or woman who, while never seeming to study, claims to be getting stellar grades. The danger here is you may be tempted to emulate what you believe this person is doing by underpreparing for your classes and exams. "If," the devil on your right shoulder may be saying to you, "this person is going to ball games, on ski trips, and out to nightclubs and bars on a daily basis and still getting good grades, why can't I?" There are two answers. First, if the individual in question really is succeeding academically with minimal preparation, she is probably brilliant, and your law school career is too important to gamble on finding out whether you are just as brilliant. Second, the distinct possibility exists that you are being misinformed and the individual is not actually doing as well as she reports. In either case, your study strategy should not change one iota.
Lastly, you may encounter fellow students with strongly held political, religious, or philosophical viewpoints who mistakenly believe law school is a debating forum and that political rhetoric is an acceptable mode of legal analysis. Be assured that it is not. At exam time, most of your professors will be looking for legal rules and some logical application of these rules to the facts your exam presents. Political rhetoric will rarely, if ever, get you any credit, either in law school (with the possible exception of a legal philosophy class known as Critical Legal Studies) or in the courts. Therefore, while it may be tolerated by lenient or bored first-year professors, it is best to just ignore much of the babbling that inevitably spews forth in all first-year classes. Concentrate instead on what the cases say and what the professor says and asks.
With the foregoing in mind, you should have at least a fairly good idea of what to expect from your first-year law professors and fellow students. Remember, knowing what to expect ahead of time and avoiding unpleasant surprises is a big part of becoming acclimated as quickly as possible to the law school environment and scoring as high as you can in the law school game.
