School: Much ado about nothing

The National Jurist recently ran an article questioning the propriety of how schools compete for their U.S. News and World Report school rankings.

If you've never thought about becoming a lawyer, here's how it works - college GPA and LSAT determine what law school you can get into, and law school grades/law review determine what your first-job offers will be like.

And that's it. How far you go from there is largely up to how hard you can work and how good a lawyer you can be.

Tom Bell, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law, complains that UF's law school (Levin) is ranked 41 when it should be ranked 43. Turns out Levin only submitted the fall class stats instead of both the fall and spring class stats (it's a moot point anyway - Levin has already switched to just one entering class in the fall).

Is there any controversy here? Is there even anything newsworthy to report? Anybody who knows legal education knows that for the most part, the rankings are a complete waste of time, as law school itself has very little to do with actually practicing law. Even disregarding those facts, a two spot error is hardly something to call the papers over.