Why Kim Kardashian, after failing exam, thinks she’s had it harder than other law students
Among the reality TV star’s challenges? She’s trying to become a lawyer without going to law school.
Kim Kardashian revealed during Thursday night’s episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” that she decided to retake the “baby bar” exam in November, while also sharing news that she had contracted COVID-19 while prepping to retake the exam.
In confessing that she failed her “baby bar” exam, aspiring lawyer Kim Kardashian also explained to her sisters, Khloe and Kourtney, that she’s faced challenges that most law students don’t have to deal with.
For one thing, the billionaire reality TV star isn’t bothering to go to law school, which itself is famously grueling and time-consuming. Kardashian explained she’s taking a harder path to pursuing a legal career. As previously reported, Kardashian has been working on her law studies the past two years through an internship with #cut50, prison reform organization co-founded by CNN commentator and attorney, Van Jones.
“If you are doing law school the way I’m doing it, it is a 4-year program instead of your typical 3-year program, and after year 1, you have to take the baby bar,” Kim Kardashian said in the episode. “This was actually harder, I hear, than the official bar.”
Exclusive: Kim Kardashian revealed that she failed her first law exam: "So you guys, I did not pass the baby bar." https://t.co/eOK6q9olLX pic.twitter.com/IetykRzQvW
— E! News (@enews) May 26, 2021
Kardashian’s other mentor, #cut50 cofounder and human rights attorney Jessica Jackson, still praised Kardashian in the “KUWTK” episode for how well she still did on the exam. Kardashian scored 474; a passing grade is 560, TMZ reported.
“That is extremely close on a test that most people are not taking in the middle of a pandemic,” said Jackson, a former mayor of Mill Valley who is now works with Jay-Z and Meek Mill’s Reform Alliance.
Another source close to Kardashian told TMZ that she faced other challenges in taking the exam, which could explain why she didn’t pass. Because of the pandemic, Kardashian took the exam at home, instead of in “a controlled environment,” the source said. At home, she had to deal with her four children, ages 2 to 7, and “other factors.”
So that means Kardashian had to take the exam in her $60 million, 15,000-square-foot mansion, where it seems reasonable to believe she had the space to create her own “controlled environment.” As for her children, it would be surprising to learn that Kardashian couldn’t call on a nanny — or two, or three or four — to help out.
In California, a person doesn’t have to graduate from law school to take the bar exam and practice law. According to the State Bar of California, a four-year apprenticeship at a law office or in a judge’s chambers may suffice for someone seeking to take the bar exam.
With regard to her children, Kardashian said she’ll keep studying to become a lawyer but lamented to her sisters how much time she spent away from them to study for the test. She said she studied for “six weeks straight, 10 to 12 hours a day.”
“The fact that I spent all that time away from my kids,” she says. “Like I can’t do it again, I don’t have time.”
The “other factors” that may have affected her exam score, and mentioned by the TMZ source, could be all the time she seemed to put into promoting her Skims shapewear line, filming “KUWTK,” working out a new content deal with Hulu, posting a bikini selfie of her studying for her bar exam, or flying her family and close friends to Tahiti during the pandemic to celebrate her 40th birthday.
SHOCKING: Kim Kardashian shares S.E.X.Y bikini photos of herself studying in the sun. https://t.co/4Gsk1DNKDI
— BLOGPAY 🧘♀️💰 (@myblogpay_) April 23, 2021
“Other factors” also could include the end of her tumultuous marriage to Kanye West. Over the past year, the rapper launched a bizarre and ethically questionable presidential campaign, suffered a serious episode of his bipolar disorder and went on tirades against Kardashian and her family, while revealing disturbing private information about their marriage and children.
More recently, Kardashian is having to deal with a situation, where some legal education on employment law could be of use. She is being sued by seven groundskeepers at her mansion, who allege she was late with their pay, refused to pay them overtime and sometimes forced them to work without meal breaks.
Indeed, Kardashian has had a lot going on, but most people who go to law school and study for the bar exam tend to say they have a lot going on. They also might be working, going to law school at night, trying to raise families without outside help and taking on massive student debt.
It’s not clear when Kardashian took the exam. She told Kourtney and Khloe she felt like “a failure” for not passing.
Maybe, like the official bar exam, it’s not unusual for aspiring lawyers to fail the baby bar the first time. Kourtney and Khloe urged her not to give up, telling her that their father, famed O.J. Simpson lawyer and friend Robert Kardashian, would be proud of her.
They also pointed out that she’s doing a noble thing, becoming a lawyer so that she can further the work she’s been doing with Jones and Jackson on criminal justice reform.
Kardashian told Vogue in 2019 that she decided to pursue a legal career after securing clemency for Alice Marie Johnson in 2018. Johnson was a grandmother in her 60s who was serving a life sentence for a 1997 nonviolent drug charge. Kardashian famously met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to successfully advocate for Johnson.
