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Last week, Kim Kardashian announced
her intention to take
the California bar exam
without going to law school.
Like all things Kardashian,
this made huge headlines.
Is this simply a new plot
for the reality show?
Or is Kim Kardashian expanding her home,
video, and makeup empire
to include a law practice?
Discover the truth in this
week's Real Law Review.
(horn music)
Kim Kardashian made news last week
by announcing her intention to take
the California bar exam
without graduating from law school.
This practice is called reading the law.
And it actually used to be the dominant
way that Americans become lawyers.
Like most lawyers, Kim
made her announcement
with a splashy article and
a photo spread in Vogue.
The Vogue article describes Kim's house
as having a master bedroom the size of,
quote, an airplane hangar,
a pile of books on tort law,
a bathroom big enough
for a basketball team,
and of course, Kanye West.
- I am the number one most impactful
artist of our generation.
I am Shakespeare in
the flesh, Walt Disney.
- Hashtag relatable.
But on a more serious note, Kim explains
that she decided to become a lawyer
after helping secure the
release of Alice Marie Johnson,
a prisoner who spent a decade in prison
for being a nonviolent drug offender.
Although Kim was mostly an intermediary
bringing up the case with
Kanye's friend Donald Trump,
the experience made her
feel out of her depth.
She state, quote, that "I
want to be able to fight
"for people who have paid
their dues to society.
"I just felt like the
system could be so different
"and I wanted to fight to fix it.
"And if I knew more,
then I could do more."
Admirably, Kim has
continued to be involved
in prison reform efforts.
So apparently she started the process
of becoming a lawyer last summer
with an apprenticeship
with a California law firm.
Her goal, apparently, is
to take the California bar in 2020.
Of course, Kim is also the daughter
of a famous lawyer, Robert Kardashian
who is problem best known
as being O.J. Simpson's
friend and attorney during
the 1995 murder trial.
Mr. Kardashian passed away in 2003
of esophageal cancer.
Now like all things Kardashian,
Kim's announcement was of course met
with a cycle of praise and backlash.
Her personal lawyer Marty Sing,
who I've actually worked
with on a few occasions,
at the firm of Lavely and Singer
said that quote, "I believe
that she will be a terrific
"lawyer and will be an asset to any firm
"that hires her, including our own."
That's probably true.
You can imagine that hiring a billionaire
reality TV star would probably be a boon
to any law firm that she
decided to work with.
Now, of course, detractors
rolled their eyes
at Kim's depiction of her studies,
especially the comment
where she said, quote,
"Took my first test.
"Got a 100!
"Super easy for me.
"The reading is what really gets me.
"It's so time-consuming.
"The concepts I grasp in two seconds."
But I think for the time being, at least,
she deserves the benefit of the doubt.
It is difficult to do the process
of reading for the law and passing
the California bar exam.
The California bar exam,
which is notoriously
the hardest bar exam
in the entire country.
But let's talk a little
bit about this process.
Law school is usually three years long
and involves grueling years of studying,
writing, taking exams, and learning
to think and argue like a lawyer.
And of course, after
attaining your law degree,
the recent law graduate has
to take a state bar exam.
Once that person passes the exam,
they are good to go, at
least in terms of being able
to practice in that one particular state.
Every state has its own bar exam,
so passing one test
doesn't really give you
the right to practice in another state.
And if you pass the bar in California,
no other state lets you just wave in
because California doesn't
let any other lawyers
wave in to the state of California.
But it hasn't always been that way.
In colonial America,
people were suspicious
of lawyers, even though the 28
of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence
actually had legal training.
That's because back in England,
the profession was only open to elites.
And, of course, Americans were revolting
against a society with a
very strong class system.
Eventually Americans realized
that they needed lawyers,
and they decided to make the training
markedly different than
what their forefathers had practiced.
The first American-trained lawyers
on US soil had to complete
a seven-year clerkship
with a lawyer or a judge.
New York, not surprisingly,
led the way here,
insisting on the completion
of a four-year degree followed
by a five-year clerkship.
This model for legal training
wasn't all that different
from apprenticing
in masonry, millwright, or plumbing.
The training was overseen
by a mentor-lawyer
who would make sure that the potential
law graduate absorbed all the knowledge
necessary for the profession.
Of course, there were some problems
with this model as it applied to lawyers.
Apprenticeship training was all practical,
so students did not receive
much theoretical knowledge.
Today some would argue that you get
way too much theoretical
knowledge at law school
and not enough practical knowledge.
The practice of law, of
course, requires both.
It requires intellectual rigor,
oral skills, writing
skills, research skills.
This can be hard to
pick up in a fast-paced
legal environment and in fact,
many apprentices found
themselves overworked
and stuck doing menial tasks
rather than actually
studying the law itself.
Over the years, a formal system
of legal education started to develop
with law schools opening and eventually,
every state starting its own bar.
However, in most states people can still
become lawyers without
actually attending law school.
Some of America's most famous lawyers
did exactly that, for example, Abe Lincoln
grew up on the frontier and
couldn't afford law school.
He did just fine.
In fact, Lincoln didn't
even apprentice with anyone.
He just read some books
and passed the test.
And started a law firm
and ended up as one of the most revered
American presidents of all time.
The process of reading the law
which Kim Kardashian, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
The process of reading the law
which Kim Kardashian is
actually going through
also worked for Clarence Darrow,
John Adams, Thomas
Jefferson, Daniel Webster,
and chief judge of the
Supreme Court, John Marshall.
In the late 19th century,
fewer than 20% of lawyers actually went
to law school which is where the
American Bar Association
enters the picture.
In 1878, a group of lawyers
started the American Bar Association
to promote for greater uniformity
in the legal profession.
The ABA wanted to restrict entrance
into the profession and spent years
lobbying states to restrict
the practice of law
to only people who actually
went to law school.
And they were pretty successful.
Although most states now require
a person to graduate from law school
to be eligible to take the bar exam,
a few outlier states still allow
non-graduates to take the test.
Today, only California,
Virginia, Washington, and Vermont
will allow you to take the bar exam
without actually going to law school.
Meanwhile, New York,
Wyoming, and New Jersey
let students take the bar exam
if they complete some sort of
mini-version of law school.
For people living in those states,
taking the bar exam through a combination
of apprenticeship and
schooling could make sense.
As I covered in another video,
the cost, debt, and time involved
can make law school a difficult
proposition for many people.
But, let's go back to Kim Kardashian.
What does she have to do
to be able to take and pass
the California bar exam?
Well, she's going to need to spend
18 hours a week for four years
with a lawyer or a judge
to get the go-ahead
to sit for the California bar exam.
She's also going to need to take
what we usually refer
to as the baby bar exam
later this summer.
The baby bar is a threshold test
for people who want to go to
an unaccredited law school or intend
to read the law without
actually going to law school.
It's a gatekeeper to make sure
that you're not going to sit
for the main bar exam if
you can't at least pass
a smaller version of it ahead of time.
Kim's supervising lawyer must devote
at least five hours a week
to direct supervision.
And must administer tests to demonstrate
that she is actually learning something.
- Kim would you stop taking
pictures of yourself?
Your sister's going to jail.
- Kim has already been reading law books,
working at a law office, and taking tests,
so I would say this is not
exactly a publicity stunt,
at least for the time being.
She will have to work in three more years
of weekly legal work and study
to get her shot at the
California bar exam in 2020.
If she passes, she will
join a very rare club.
In 2014, 84,000 people took a bar exam.
But just 60 were apprentices.
And of those 60 people,
only 17 actually passed the bar exam.
Now, if you want to read for the law
like Kim Kardashian, you'll
need a productivity system
to manage your time and
learn to study efficiently.
I highly recommend my
friend Thomas Frank's
Skillshare Productivity Masterclass,
How to Create a Custom System that Works.
Even if you're not trying to pivot
from being a Kardashian to a lawyer,
it'll help you transform your personal
and professional life by creating
a simple customized productivity system.
- Oh, it's on.
- Or, if you already a lawyer
and want to pivot to being a
Kardashian-style reality star,
you can lean all the beauty tips
the Thomas Frank uses in Chelsea Baker's
Skillshare class on applying makeup
using professional techniques.
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It could even help you
become a reality star lawyer.
- Oh my gosh, Alice, you're out.
- [Alice] Yes. (screams) (cries)
- Do you think Kim will stick with it?
Do you think that people should be able
to practice the law without
going to law school?
Leave your objections in the comments.
And check out my other
Real Law Reviews over here
where I will see you in court.
