Kim Kardashian Provides a Bar Exam Update

And in this week’s bar-related pop culture news …

Entrepreneur and reality TV star Kim Kardashian offered an update on her journey to becoming a lawyer: She plans to take the California bar exam in February 2025.

Kim Kardashian, Entrepreneur and Founder, SKIMS, SKKN, SKKY

That’s 670 days from now, but who’s counting?

At the Time 100 Summit in New York earlier this week, Kim Kardashian told CNN anchor Poppy Harlow and audience members that she hopes some of her most meaningful work is ahead of her.

“I would be just as happy being an attorney full-time and doing that," said Kim Kardashian, who has been preparing for the bar exam for several years already.

California, where Kim Kardashian resides, is one of a handful of states that allows individuals to sit for the bar exam by participating in an “apprenticeship” program in lieu of attending law school. Since 2019, Kim Kardashian has been preparing for the exam though California’s Law Office Study Program by working with CNN commentator Van Jones and attorney Jessica Jackson and focusing on criminal justice reform.

She’s also preparing for the exam with the help of BARBRI.

In California, students preparing to become a lawyer through the Law Office Study Program, like Kim Kardashian, or students attending state-unaccredited law schools must pass the “baby bar” (officially called the “First-Year Law Students’ Examination”) after completing their first year of law study before being able to continue their education and ultimately be eligible to sit for the California bar exam.

Kim Kardashian passed the “baby bar” in 2021, and now she has her sights on the February 2025 California bar exam.

And while it took her four attempts to pass the “baby bar,” she passed an exam that typically less than 20 percent of the applicants pass. That’s quite the achievement.

In fact, one of Kim Kardashian’s essays from the “baby bar” received almost a perfect score and was selected by the California bar examiners as a representative good answer for future examinees to review.

Here's a copy of Kim Kardashian’s response that was selected as a representative good answer by the State Bar of California. It’s a very solidly written response in almost all respects, substantively, structurally, and organizationally.

I encourage you to review the question and Kim Kardashian’s response.

I won’t go too much into the substantive law of the Criminal Law question, but here are some reminders from Kim Kardashian's selected response to make your own responses a bit stronger.

Make your response as easy to read as possible. Use paragraphs and headings to separate the major issues, and use subheadings to separate the minor issues or discussion points.
Follow CIRAC or CRAC. Have a structured and methodical format for each section of your response.
Don’t rule dump irrelevant legal principles in your rules section.
Make sure your Rules section only contains blackletter law principles (i.e., don’t include specific facts within your rules section). There should be no facts from the test question in your Rules section.
Incorporate words like “here,” “under these facts,” and “in this case” to introduce the beginning of your Analysis section.
Develop the Analysis section by incorporating specific facts from the test question. Notice how the selected response not only incorporates the facts but also explains the significance and importance of those facts. Notice, too, how much long the Analysis section is compared to the length of the corresponding Rules section. This should always be the case.
Provide counterarguments and anticipate and address weaknesses in your discussions.
Her discussion of common law murder, particularly her discussion of malice aforethought, is very solid and methodical.