Kim Kardashian vowed not to give up on her dream of becoming a lawyer after she failed to pass the California bar exam this summer, calling it “fuel” to motivate her.
The reality star wrote Saturday on Instagram that she was “so close” to passing the test required to become a practicing attorney. She joked that while she might not be an attorney yet, she plays “a very well-dressed one on TV.”
“Six years into this law journey, and I’m still all in until I pass the bar,” Kardashian wrote. “No shortcuts, no giving up — just more studying and even more determination.”
Kardashian, 45, has expressed interest in criminal justice reform and her desire to follow in her father’s footsteps. Robert Kardashian Sr. was a high-profile Los Angeles attorney best known for his role in O.J. Simpson’s defense in the 1995 murder trial in which the former NFL player was accused of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Her father died in 2003 after being treated for esophageal cancer.
Over the course of her family’s reality show, Kardashian has shown her efforts to become an attorney. She registered with the California State Bar to study law in a program that allows someone to apprentice with a practicing lawyer or judge as an alternative to the traditional law school route.
Kardashian never completed college, writing in a 2019 Instagram post that she was 15 credits shy of graduating. But the alternative program required a minimum of 18 hours a week of work over four years, she wrote, adding that she’d be taking monthly exams.
She then took the “baby bar,” also known as the First-Year Law Students’ Examination. Kardashian made three attempts at the exam —including one where she had Covid and a “104 fever” — before she passed in 2021.
Even without a law degree, Kardashian has leveraged her fame to advocate for people whom she believes have been unjustly prosecuted or disproportionately sentenced in their criminal cases.
In the most well-known instance, she worked for the release of Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence on a drug conviction. Johnson, a grandmother, was a nonviolent offender who spent 21 years in federal prison after being convicted in connection with a drug trafficking conspiracy.
Kardashian pressed Johnson’s case to the public and directly to President Donald Trump, who commuted Johnson’s sentence in 2018, leading to her release.
She also released a 2020 docuseries called “Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project,” which featured specific cases to highlight issues around mass incarceration.
Recently, Kardashian has advocated for the release of Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who have been serving life sentences since they were found guilty of murdering their parents in 1996. Their case required two trials, as the first attempt to convict them of the 1989 double homicide ended in a mistrial.
Kardashian wrote in an essay last year that the case was “more complex than it appears on the surface” and pointed to the brothers’ allegations that they suffered years of sexual, emotional and physical abuse growing up.
“I also strongly believe that they were denied a fair second trial and that the exclusion of crucial abuse evidence denied Erik and Lyle the opportunity to fully present their case, further undermining the fairness of their conviction,” Kardashian wrote.
The brothers were recently denied parole but are actively pursuing new trials to overturn their convictions, as well as asking California Gov. Gavin Newsom for clemency.
Kardashian has kept up with the law program over six years while balancing her advocacy work and her own career, which has included launching her brand SKIMS and dipping her toe in Hollywood.
The 45-year-old is starring in Ryan Murphy’s new show “All’s Fair,” which centers on an all-female law firm. Kardashian plays divorce attorney Allura Grant, and her performance was not well received by critics.
The Hollywood Reporter’s critic wrote that Kardashian’s acting was “stiff and affectless without a single authentic note” but that it might be fitting for a show that “seems to want not to be watched so much as mined for viral bits and pieces.”
