Kim Kardashian Finally Passes California’s ‘Baby Bar’ Exam
The entrepreneur and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star announced on Instagram that after two years of studying and three attempts at taking it, she has passed the California “baby bar” exam, also known as the First-Year Law Students’ Examination, according to the California State Bar website.
First-year law students attending a “degree program at a State Bar-unaccredited registered law school, through the Law Office Study Program and those without two years of college work attending a Committee of Bar Examiners- or an American Bar Association-accredited law school” must pass the exam to be eligible to sit for the bar, the website states.
In her lengthy post, Kardashian said she failed the exam three times during the two-year journey.
“But I got back up each time and studied harder and tried again until I did it!!!” she wrote, noting she had Covid-19 on the third attempt with a “104 fever but I’m not making excuses.”
“In California, the way I’m studying law, you need to take 2 bar exams, this was just the first one but with a harder pass rate,” she added. “I was told by top lawyers that this was a close to impossible journey and harder than the traditional law school route but it was my only option and it feels so so sooooo good to be here and on my way to achieving my goals.”
The news comes over two years after Kardashian first expressed her interest in pursuing a law degree.
The 41-year-old, who did not complete college, initially said she had plans to take the bar exam in 2022. Four states, including California, where she lives, offer an alternative path to passing the bar known as “reading the law,” or apprenticing with a practicing lawyer or judge.
She said she was inspired by her involvement in the case of Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who was serving life in prison in Alabama for a nonviolent drug conviction.
She has since been updating followers on her journey.
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“I’ve seen some comments from people who are saying it’s my privilege or my money that got me here, but that’s not the case,” she wrote in a 2019 Instagram post, which accompanied a photo of her studying alongside her attorney mentors, Jessica Jackson and Erin Haney, to whom she was introduced by CNN commentator Van Jones.
“One person actually said I should ‘stay in my lane.’ I want people to understand that there is nothing that should limit your pursuit of your dreams, and the accomplishment of new goals,” Kardashian wrote in the post two years ago. “You can create your own lanes, just as I am. The state bar doesn’t care who you are.”
In April, Kardashian shared a photo of herself studying in the sun for the exam.
She also talked about failing the “baby bar” on the final season of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
“So, you guys, I did not pass the baby bar,” Kardashian says in a clip from the episode. “If you do law school the way 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’s actually harder, I hear, than the official bar.” She needed a 560 to pass, and got a 474 on her first attempt.
Kardashian’s father, Robert Kardashian, was a prominent Los Angeles lawyer who was part of the legal team representing O.J. Simpson in his 1995 trial in the killings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Simpson was acquitted.
“I know my dad would be so proud and he would actually be so shocked to know that this is my path now but he would have been my best study partner,” Kardashian wrote in her Monday update. “I am told he was notorious for making fun of people who didn’t pass on their first attempt like he did, but he would have been my biggest cheerleader!”
She thanked Jones, Jackson, Haney and Bar Bri Law School bar prep (where she said she went through “10 hour days, daily 4 hour Zooms, our in person practice tests week after week”) for helping her achieve this latest feat.
“Bottom line is don’t ever give up even when you are holding on by a thread, you can do it!!!!!” she wrote. “Set your mind to it and get it done because it feels soooooo good once you get to the other side!”