In 2019, Kim Kardashian announced in a Vogue cover story that she was attending her own makeshift law school and studying to take the California bar exam at some point. At that time, she thought she would be able to take the bar exam in 2022. It… did not work out that way. It took her four tries to pass the “baby bar” exam, which is administered after most law students’ first year. That was in 2021. I wondered back then if Kim would eventually admit that she sort of gave up on her dream of becoming a lawyer. But she’s still at it, six years later. She just took another major exam:
Kim Kardashian is continuing her journey to becoming a lawyer. On Thursday, March 27, the SKIMS founder took the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE) in Los Angeles, PEOPLE can confirm.
According to the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the assessment is typically completed before the bar and a passing score is mandatory in order to practice law in California.
This is just one more step Kim has taken toward becoming an attorney since she revealed she was following in her late father Robert Kardashian Sr.’s footsteps in 2019. Although she has yet to take the bar, she has since spent the past few years working in criminal justice reform and helping several people commute their prison sentences.
In 2021, she took the “baby bar,” also known as the First-Year Law Student’s Examination, and opened up about the difficult experience after passing on her fourth try.
“OMFGGGG I PASSED THE BABY BAR EXAM!!!! Looking in the mirror, I am really proud of the woman looking back today in the reflection,” she wrote on X at the time. “For anyone who doesn’t know my law school journey, know this wasn’t easy or handed to me.”
“I failed this exam 3 times in 2 years, but I got back up each time and studied harder and tried again until I did it!!! (I did have COVID on the 3rd try w a 104 fever but I’m not making excuses)” she continued in a lengthy thread. “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.”
Lawyers and law students help me out – they’re saying that the MPRE comes before the bar exam, but what kind of timing is between the two? Does this mean Kim’s hokey “law studies” are over and now she has to pass the MPRE, and once she does that, she’s ready for the bar exam right away? Or is it like… she has one more year to go, something like that? I looked it up… the MPRE is considered easier than the bar exam. Hm. I wonder if Kim will talk about it if she flunks it, and I wonder if she’ll announce it when she’s ready to take the bar. Even though I’ve sort of rolled my eyes at how often Kim seems like she’s half-assing her law studies, I do have to give her some begrudging credit – I truly expected her to give up years ago, and it’s sort of cool that she’s still trying to follow through on this, six years later.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Celebrities arriving at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Featuring: Kim Kardashian Where: Los Angeles, United States When: 02 Mar 2025 Credit: Doug Peters/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Celebrities arriving at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Featuring: Kim Kardashian Where: Los Angeles, United States When: 02 Mar 2025 Credit: Doug Peters/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Celebrities arriving at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Featuring: Kim Kardashian Where: Los Angeles, United States When: 02 Mar 2025 Credit: Doug Peters/PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Vanity Fair Oscar Party held at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Featuring: Kim Kardashian Where: Beverly Hlls, California, United States When: 02 Mar 2025 Credit: Jennifer Bloc/Future Image/Cover Images **NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN GERMANY**
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- Vanity Fair Oscar Party held at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Featuring: Kim Kardashian Where: Beverly Hlls, California, United States When: 02 Mar 2025 Credit: Jennifer Bloc/Future Image/Cover Images **NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN GERMANY**
Yes she does keep trying and this rate some of her children will be in college or old enough to attend college before she finally passes the exam to be a real lawyer.
Yeah but I can’t hate on KK for this (although I hate on her for MANY other things). When people say “I’ll be THIS AGE, when I finally write a book/finish school/achieve my milestone” my answer is always the same – you’ll be the same age if you don’t do it too.
So? My kid is in college and I’m getting a Ph.D. People can learn and achieve at any age. There are lots of things to criticise her for, but this isn’t one of them.
It’s not the act of trying for a degree; it’s her effing attitude. Claiming — with her army of tutors, professors, Nannies and staff — that this is so much harder for her than for normal people like us is just typical Kim. “Get of your asses and work!”
And congrats! I’m after my MBA now, too, working full time with a toddler and one on the way. The older I get, the bettter my time management skills are 😁
It is required for EVERYONE. It’s a weird ethics test. It can be fairly easily but the questions are tricky because the right answer is usually the second most “ethical” one because that aligns with the model rules of ethics. She’ll pass I’m sure.
It’s really tricky because they’ll have multiple choice answers that look the same but the punctuation or a word or two will be different and that can change the whole meaning of the answer.
MPRE scores are usually good only for 2 years and a person has to retake if they don’t pass the bar in that time. California requires an 86 to pass. The bar exam is July 29 and 30.
Congratulations to you too, @squiddusmaximus. Sorry if this is in the wrong place; I find it hard to reply to the correct person here sometimes. What you are doing is no easy feat! And yes, KK does have all the help and resources in the world, but she’s still taking the road less traveled to being a lawyer. My mom went to law school when I was in college! And it was no picnic for her. But she was 2nd in her class. I can’t believe I’m defending a celebrity I do not even like. But I always support learning and bettering one’s self at any age.
You can take the MPRE whenever, generally. Some people take it right after their ethics class in law school before graduation, I took mine after I passed the bar. It’s a joke of an exam really. Should you have sex with a client or refrain? Is it ok to commingle client funds with your own?
It actually kind of disappointment me how much of a token exam it is. Lawyers really should be held to higher standards but it’s just a checkbox to make the bar associations look like they’re doing something to ensure the moral integrity of the law without really establishing effective standards
Don’t have sex with your client and don’t commingle the funds 😄
She could have saved herself lots of time and trouble by just enrolling in law school. 3 years. Done.
She would need a bachelors degree first. So 7 years if she went full time.
I have no snark about this. Honestly, for someone whose life is defined by so much artifice and whose success is defined by manufactured drama, image, and popular sentiment (“vibes”), pursuing and accomplishing anything real, challenging (even if less challenging for you than the average person, for so many reason), and — this is important — OPTIONAL (when you’re an entertainment industry/beauty industry billionaire, you don’t have to finish school, better yourself academically, pursue any more degrees or certifications, or expand your world in any way. The money and success means you can create any world you want, any way you want, free of effort or pushback, if you want), is admirable. And doing it over time, after set-backs and failures, and after realizing it’s harder than perhaps you expected, is a good lesson for her kids and fans in her world, who have come to admire and follow her every move based on this that are far less substantive.
I say this knowing very little about her save the highlights of her father’s story, her fame, and the drama, but I also know she has children and showing them theres ANYTHING in life beyond the manufactured, oft-artificial, and rare air she, her family, and Kanye have represented is essential. Seeing mom do this in addition to all of the other things, plants just enough of a seed that a life filled with indulgence isn’t ENOUGH and shouldn’t be enough. And even if she does the bare minimum of advocacy (her causes so far have been ones I can agree with, including sentencing reform) and lends more star power than legal elbow-grease to cases, I can’t complain. It’s still more and better than those children — and her fans — could be seeing when they look up to her and her example.
So no snark. I’m pro-education and pro-giving back, and this looks to be a bit of both.
If she was all about education she would have enrolled in undergrad, gotten a degree and then applied to law school.
KK is doing the short cuts to get credentials because currently the United States does not just give out qualifications to be lawyers.
It is a serious profession but she is not a serious person. There are clients who rely on trained lawyers for help. And her dad was a lawyer so she knows exactly the work required to qualify, but she is not prepared to do it.
And her having kids is not an excuse for someone with hired help. I went to law school with regular moms who managed to do it without nannies and housekeepers.
In the end, she still has to pass the Bar which in CA is no easy feat. The pass rate when I took it was 28%. Granted, I took it in the winter which historically has a lower pass rate but still…
(FTR, I took the IL Bar straight out of law school which had a 90% pass rate. Oddly enough, the pressure was greater because failing was so rare and could wreck your career.)
Not a fan of any of the K’s but what she’s doing is a legitimate way to become a lawyer. It requires a formal minimum four year apprenticeship in a lawyer’s office “reading the law” while studying on her own and with tutors. It’s pretty much the last vestige of white collar apprenticeships. California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington still have structured Legal Apprenticeship programs (all with different requirements) that do not require any law school to take the Bar exam. New York also has a Legal Apprenticeship program but that one requires completing the first year of law school before starting an apprenticeship.
California’s is the Law Office Study Program and it requires a four year apprenticeship in either a lawyer’s office or a judge’s chambers, and passing the baby bar exam, and passing the actual bar exam.
Kaiser, as far as dates go, the MPRE is offered three times per year (the exam itself is only 2 hours). So this year, it’s March 26 or 27, August 20 or 21, & November 13 or 14. Results come out within 5 weeks. She can then take the bar exam itself in July or February.
ETA: As fantasticat says, you can also take it after the bar but lots of people do the MPRE first just to be done with it.
The California Baby Bar and the prep exams are no joke. They are considered to be harder than the Bar Exam itself. So if she passes this latest one she will likely pass the Bar Exam easily. I thought she had quit but I guess not. Good for her to have an interest outside attention and fashion
The baby bar is meant to weed out people who want to be lawyers without law school— it’s definitely very challenging. The MPRE is easy breezy. I don’t know the passage rate but I’d bet it’s very high. It is not meant to be an obstacle but more a rite of passage and symbol that the legal profession cares about ethics (debatable).
The MPRE is not harder than the bar exam. It is much more narrow and thus easier to prepare for. Passing rates vary by jurisdiction but can be as high as 86%. Most people take the MPRE while in law school with a full course load, so that should give you an idea of the difficulty.
Students who attend accredited law schools do not have to take the CA Baby Bar. Thus, most law students do not take it.
Genuine question: Why exactly does she want to pass the bar exam, and if/when she does, what does she want with this?
In general, I’d applaud KK, BUT I got the feeling she was used to help Trump’s reputation during 1.0, she’s clearly chummy with Musk and likes cyber*uckups, and she hasn’t dropped Ivanka& Jared. I think she’s also on Bezos’ guest list for the wedding. Is she still useful to these people and does she want to be?
Eh I’d respect it more if she hadn’t added that bit about how “top lawyers” have told her this is impossible and way harder than law school.
It’s “harder” than regular law school because you have to be completely self motivated. You can’t just roll out of bed and show up for class. It’s like online colleges. It’s not that people can’t pass the classes, it’s that the dropout rates are much, much higher.
But she gets to skip all the other shitty parts of law school-quizzes, tests, finals and the Socratic method. Also, everyone in law school is self motivated. You don’t have to go but people choose to, anyway. On top of that, no one in law school has a few choice lawyers at their disposal to teach them the material one on one.
You don’t roll out of bed and go to law school classes. Law school doesn’t work like that. And no one is chasing you down so you do have to be disciplined and self-motivated. Going to law school is not the easier course. Taking 6 or 7 years to absorb only what you need to know to pass a law exam is not grueling, especially for someone who doesn’t have to look for a job, participate in the extra-curriculars to get a job, take a clinical course to learn how to actually practice law, write-on to a journal, write a single thing, learn how to do legal research, wrestle with how to pay for law school, etc. etc. She isn’t studying law, she’s studying to pass a law exam; the latter is a smaller subset of what law students do.
And that’s precisely one of the reasons I continue to loathe the Kardashians. The indication that she — with her gaggle of nannies, staff, tutors, and on-demand professors — somehow has it harder than the normies is just so, so condescending and out of touch. There’s a reason Kim couldn’t get her law degree on a regular person’s schedule (e.g., college then law school) and it’s not because she’s a genius.
Attorney here: The MPRE is a multiple choice ethics exam. You have to take it before you can take the bar, but taking the MPRE vs. taking the CA Bar exam is
like taking a spelling quiz vs. writing a dissertation.
Tbh I don’t need her updates cuz this ‘prep’ has been going on for years. She must have a foolproof way to cheat to be back talking about this.
I think this is a good thing for her. Even with help, it IS a really hard thing to accomplish. Especially without previous academic experience and a little later in life with kids WHO depend on you as their primary care giver.
PS: having help (nannies especially) does not diminish every achievement. Yes, there are a lot of people whose road to the bar/a degree may be harder, but does that mean everyone else’s Journey has to be just as hard to count?
She’ll be 100% coached /tutored as well.. Not self studying but private tutoring all through.
Absolutely, but she will still have to digest the knowledge herself and will have to sit the exams.
And that is an achievement and something to be proud of.
I’m not saying she cheated on the baby bar. Just interesting the one time she passed when it was virtual….
As far as the timing, in my jurisdiction the MPRE could be taken before or after the bar exam, but you had to have a passing score before a law license could be issued. So you could take the bar and get a passing score but then that would be on hold until you passed the MPRE. I don’t think people usually do that – most people I knew took the MPRE sometime during our second year, around the same time we took ethics courses. The MPRE is offered more times per year (and in more locations) than the bar, so there’s some flexibility with it, which is nice.
I’m not Ms. Kardashian’s biggest fan (far from it!) but I do admire her for her perseverance. I wish her well.
Isn’t there a statute of limitations on how long you can take to become a lawyer? I mean, she seems to have been “studying” for at least a decade.