Keeping Up with the Kardashians star Kim Kardashian may have encountered challenges with keeping up with her legal studies.
In an orchestrated sequence (like much of the content on reality or “unscripted” television) in a sneak peak clip for the TV show’s final season, the would-be lawyer dejectedly revealed to her sisters that she flunked California’s so-called baby bar exam.
“If you do law school the way that I’m doing it, it is a four-year program instead of your typical three-year program, And after year one, you have to take the baby bar. This one actually is harder, I hear, than the official bar,” Kardashian explains in the narration.
The reality star’s attorney mentor claims in the footage that the Kim’s score of 474 is “extremely close” to the 560 passing grade. The supportive mentor also disagrees when Kim describes herself as “a failure”
Parenthetically, test-taking savvy isn’t necessarily an indicator of competence by any means.
The self-involved socialite Kardashian then lamented that her family and professional commitments could make it difficult to take the exam — which is administered remotely in June and November — again.
California is one of just a few states that still allows someone to pursue a career in law on the basis of an apprenticeship in a law firm rather than sitting thorough three boring years of law school (four, if a student goes at night on a part-time basis).
This old-timey process is known as “reading the law.”
To continue on a legal career path in California, however, it is necessary to pass the baby bar, a.k.a. the First Year Law Students’ Examination, which is a warmup for the official bar exam at the end.
Not everyone has to take it: “Law students who have been advanced to their second year of law study at an [American Bar Association] or California-accredited law school and completed a minimum of 60 semester or 90 quarter units of undergraduate work are generally exempt from the exam,” according to the state of California.
The bar exam is the very challenging test, consisting of both multiple choice and essay questions, that law school graduates anywhere in the U.S. must pass to gain entry to the state-licensed profession. Common sense suggests it is far more demanding than the baby bar, contrary to Kardashian’s assertion.
With much of the law school curriculum often oriented toward the theoretical (and ideological) rather than the practical, the reading-the-law approach may actually provide more effective, real-world training.
Kardashian claims that she studied for the exam for six consecutive weeks, 10-12 hours per day, which is totally plausible, right?
She subsequently told her Instagram followers that “‘Unfortunately I haven’t passed yet, but I’m not giving up and I’m preparing to take it again soon.”
Kardashian, who has become a criminal justice reform advocate, is following in the footsteps of her late father, Robert Kardashian, who was a member of O.J. Simpson’s legal defense team back in the day.
Kim’s activism famously resulted in President Trump commuting the sentence of, and later pardoning, Alice Marie Johnson.
