How would you guys describe the social atmosphere of HLS?
Is it really like high school (or middle school)?
Do students generally hook up/date each other like undergrad?
1L at any school does have a bit of a high school feel in that you have a set schedule where you see the same people all the time, all have lunch at the same time, etc., but I definitely did not find HLS at all cliquey, which is what I normally associate with the middle/high school label. I guess that will depend on your section, but in my experience the vast majority of people here are very friendly and open. In my section, people were very apt to post to the section Facebook group like, "Hey, I'm going to grab drinks at X, everyone is welcome!" Especially first semester. By second semester people did settle more into different friend groups, as to be expected. But it still never felt cliquey--there were still plenty of all-section events, and plenty of moving in between the different "groups." Like sure, by second semester I had the people I was closest too, but if they didn't happen to be at lunch one day I always felt welcome sitting with anyone from my section, there were plenty of times I would grab drinks with people I was not as close to, etc. (And even the friend "groups" weren't as defined and closed off as a stereotypical high school clique. If you asked each of my 10 closest friends from my section to come up with a list of THEIR 10 closest friends from the section, everyone's list would look different. There's lots of social fluidity.)
(2L is even further from any sort of high school experience because everyone is on different schedules/classes. In that way it becomes a lot more like college or the real world, where you sometimes have to make a point of seeing your closest friends because your schedules don't necessarily naturally overlap anymore.)
As for if students hook up: It's not at all like undergrad. A lot of people come in already in relationships, and many people who are single are looking for something a little more serious. The people I know who go on a lot of dates/hook up with a lot of people tend to mostly do that through online dating/outside of the law school. Some relationships definitely form at the school, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing like the "everyone's hooking up with everyone, everyone is dating another student" atmosphere I experienced in undergrad.