Lawyer factories: On basketball courts, UCLA has...

Lawyer factories: On basketball courts, UCLA has outshined USC for years. In criminal and civil courts, it may be another matter. USC is ranked No. 15 and UCLA No. 24 in a survey of law schools conducted by U.S. News & World Report.

But we wonder about the accuracy of these ratings--and not just because President Clinton’s law school (Yale) is No. 1.

What really bothers us is that several categories were used as criteria, such as “Reputation rank by academics.” But the most obvious category was omitted: “Number of grads serving as commentators during the Simpson trial.”

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Kids r them: Rose Gilbert of Rancho Mirage and Richard Buscher of Walnut each forwarded an eye-catching ad that struck Buscher as a possible “test run for Newt’s orphanage concepts.” Actually, it’s for a Kids-brand fruit juice.

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Slips happen: We misidentified the reader who faxed us Thursday about The Times’ crossword puzzle clue that was “-- Happens” (four letters). The perfectly clean answer was “ITSOHAPPENS.” Anyway, because of a sloppy fax--OK, we know we’re not the first to use that alibi--we said our correspondent was Paul Coker. Actually, it was Paul Ecker.

As for calling him a “Coker,” Ecker said on Friday, “if you’re going to misprint my name from now on, just use ‘Sixer.’ That’s my only vice.”

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Which reminds us: Kent Bridwell of West L.A. bought a work bench and didn’t know how risque it was until he spotted the model name. He figures it’s supposed to say “vise,” adding, “I looked this one up in my dictionerrory .”

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All O.J., all the time: KCOP-TV’s Wendy Walsh, who anchors a nightly recap of the Simpson trial, was supposed to be interviewed in her office by the FX network the other day. When the cameraman walked in, Walsh recognized him as Darryl Smith, the free-lancer who, by coincidence, had testified during the Simpson trial that day about his videotaping of the murder scene.

“Hi, I’m here to shoot you,” Smith said.

“No, I’m here to shoot you,” Walsh quipped and she persuaded Smith to sit down for an interview for her recap before Smith began taping her for the FX interview.

Observes Walsh: “There’s just too much media in this town.”

miscelLAny One of the many camera crews seen within a few blocks of the L.A. Criminal Courts building was composed of Albanians shooting their first story in the United States. They didn’t speak English and they wound up at the Music Center. Which is exactly where they wanted to be. The crew recorded the U.S. debut of Albanian soprano Inva Mula in L.A. Opera’s current production of “Don Pasquale.” Hmmmm. Interesting concept--talking about culture in L.A. instead of O.J. Maybe it’ll start a trend.