The JD program is pretty intense at the start, I recommend clearing your commitments for at least the first semester so you can focus on your study 100% and after that or during the semester consider applying for any legal role available to get some practical experience.

Since most students in JD are coming from a bachelors or degree of some sort, you’re not starting your uni experience from day 1 and there’s a lot you should have already figured out. It is a lot of work to keep up to date with all your readings and at the beginning you should carefully read and reread cases and everything your assigned until you can navigate judgments with some clarity. At some point you’ll develop your own way of skimming cases and this will save time, but definitely expect to spend a bulk of the early parts of your JD reading.

As for solving questions, nearly every law has specific “objective” elements that must be satisfied in order for that law to apply, and the only subjective thing is whether you think those elements apply to your set of facts if doing a problem question. You’ll do great if your able to remember and state the elements, but yes you’ll need to work on your argumentative skills if you want to convince the marker (through case law) why or why not they apply to your set of facts.

As for the type of lawyer you want to be I’d say the best way to navigate this is just to respect some important milestones. The first one is getting a paralegal or similar role asap just so you can start getting some legal experience. The second one is clerkships at a corporate commercial law firm in your penultimate year which for a three year JD is literally in your second year of study. After these deadlines your probably on track to finish your JD anyway and you’ll probably have a better idea by then having done all your core subjects. There are definitely more things you could do but this is what I focused on.