A lot. Sadly enough, the majority that I learned, at least personally, had nothing to do with the law. The learning process starts well before your first class, it starts with the rumors and myths and old wives tales. Law school is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, your life is over, if you’re in a relationship it will never last, and get ready for the rat race. Some are true, some are false, some good be true and some good be false. The proper advice you should take before entering into law school is that everyone has their own experience and law school, like most things in life, is what you make of it.

Now, what I learned in my first year of law school once I actually got there. The library doesn’t have to be your best friend, or your home. How long someone is in the library, or how often they are there with their computer up, intently looking at the screen like they are studying when in reality they are trying to read the small text on their facebook IM, has no correlation necessarily with how smart they are how smart they are going to become. In fact, there plenty of my friends scored at the top of the class who never stepped into the library, and on the contrary, others ended at the top of the class while never stepping out of the law school library. Therefore, like the LSAT, library time is no indicator of law school performance.

Supplements are not the devil. Orientation will likely preach that supplements are the devil and you can’t perform well without only relying on the case book. That, for most people, is a lie. Now don’t take this the wrong way, you need to read the cases because the supplements won’t teach you everything, but use the supplements for exactly what they are called; to supplement your reading.

Pick your friends carefully and your study groups even more careful, and most importantly don’t mix the two if you can help it. Study groups get competitive, some more than others, which is embarrassing when you step back and look at it. Kids don’t want to share their outlines, their notes, their supposed secrets they’ve heard from their ultra-secret 2L and 3L friends that in reality are telling everyone the exact same things. Anyways, moral of the story, be careful.

There’s more to life than law school. I know it seems daunting, and seems like the second you let your guard down law school is going to eat you up, but trust me, there is more to life than what you’re doing right now in law school. It’s important to have a life outside of law school; otherwise you’re going to get burnt out after year one and unfortunately they don’t hand out J.D.’s or admissions to the bar after your 1L year.

Finally, study your ass off cause there’s nothing worse than spending nine months and $40,000 plus for nothing.