Kim Kardashian's Bid to Become a Lawyer Faces Long Odds
The reality star has said she plans to take the bar exam in 2022 without attending law school, but few who go that route pass the test.
April 10, 2019 at 02:30 PM
3 minute read
Kim Kardashian revealed in a new Vogue interview that she's planning to become a lawyer—minus the three years of cold calls, study groups and final exams.
Instead of law school, Kardashian says she has begun a four-year course of legal study with an unnamed San Francisco law firm. The State Bar of California allows people to bypass law school if they study under a lawyer or judge, a system that is commonly referred to as apprenticeship but is not widely used.
If true, Kardashian will have to beat tough odds on the California bar exam, which has proven a challenge for many takers who spent years in law school and have Juris Doctors. Just 41 percent of those who took the July California bar exam passed, with the vast majority having attended law school. That rate was under 3 percent for the small number of people who sat for exam under California's “four-year qualification” provision, according to state bar statistics.
It remains to be seen how serious Kardashian is about her plans for a legal career, however. Her husband, rapper Kanye West, sowed confusion last September when he told the television show “Extra” that Kardashian was in law school. Her representatives later clarified that she is not a law student, but “is so entrenched in the legal system with her activism that it is like going to law school.“
The reality television star is, of course, the daughter of the late Robert Kardashian, who was among the team of lawyers who represented O.J. Simpson in his 1995 murder trial. More recently, Kim Kardashian has been involved in criminal justice reform efforts, helping to successfully push President Donald Trump to grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson—a 63-year-old grandmother who had been in an Alabama prison since 1996 for a nonviolent drug conviction. According to the Vogue article, Kardashian has been visiting prisons, lobbying governors and attending criminal justice reform meetings at the White House for months while advocating for the recently passed First Step Act, under which an estimated 4,000 federal prisoners will be released.
The Vogue article says Kardashian began her legal studies last summer. She must log 18 hours of supervised study per week, and next summer will have to take the First Year Law Students' Examination, better known as the “baby bar.” If she passes—like nearly a third of those who took the baby bar last July—she will be able to continue her studies.
“First year of law school, you have to cover three subjects: criminal law, torts, and contracts,” Kardashian told Vogue. “To me, torts is the most confusing, contracts the most boring, and crim law I can do in my sleep. Took my first test, I got a 100. Super easy for me. The reading is what really gets me. It's so time-consuming. The concepts I grasp in two seconds.”
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