There is no way to know what question will be popular, vs. sink into oblivion. As for the other matter, I would estimate that 2/3 of the questions asked are technically asking for legal advice. Very few questions are strictly academic / educational. About 2/3 of those questions can reasonably be interpreted as rephrasable as a general information question. Standard practice here is therefore to cut questioners slack, and not interpret most questions very narrowly and literally as a question about a very specific set of circumstances. That way, we are not giving legal advice. The problem is that over 2/3 of people don't know what it means to "ask for legal advice", so they also don't know how to avoid doing it. Stating what the law is is not giving legal advice. Recommending a course of action based on a belief about the law is giving legal advice.
In reality, we would like to ban answers that give legal advice, but that's technically impossible (the reasons for wanting to ban legal advice is legal). The surrogate is to ban asking questions that encourage legal advice answers.
Pursuant to additional discussion in the commentary, I want to point out that we generally adhere to the rule of lenity, hence give the benefit of the doubt to questioners. Apart from the fact that 2/3 of questions are actually asking for legal advice, 2/3 of questions are unclear. If we automatically close such questions, we will have very few questions that survive, and that would not be good for the health of LSE (it would be fatal).
I think it is useful to look at closed questions, to see what kinds of questions get closed for seeking legal advice. One example is this, which absolutely clearly is a request for legal advice. Another is this one, which is not so clear but still it got the required 5 closure votes. Now let's look at the core of the question in question:
What are the legal ramifications of this situation? Is it a criminal
act? What about the other 21 students who saw what happened and
did/said nothing; just watched me ingest the medicine? Areare they not
accessories?
This is a clear request for information about what the law is. It does not ask "how do I get back at the student who did this?" or "how do I get the RSO fired". I really do not see any way in which this can be interpreted as a request for legal advice, in the sense that one goes to a lawyer and pays for a legal consultation.