Last week, Kim Kardashian West revealed in her Vogue cover story that she is studying law with plans to take the California Bar Exam in 2022. She will be doing so in an unconventional way––instead of earning a law degree, Kardashian West will complete a four-year apprenticeship before sitting for the exam, an avenue the California State Bar and some others allow.
In classic Kardashian-hating form, people came for Kardashian West, calling her way a shortcut and easy way out.
I’m honestly glad for Kardashian West. Last year, she did an incredible thing in helping free Alice Marie Johnson, and I’m happy she wants to do more. As CNN commentator Van Jones said, “This is the daughter of an accomplished attorney and the mother of three Black kids who is using her full power to make a difference on a tough issue and is shockingly good at it.”
Yesterday, Kardashian West clapped back at her dissenters via Instagram. And I’m glad she did.
In this, I support Kardashian West. I think it’s great that she wants to be a lawyer, and I want her to succeed. And she’s right––nothing should limit the pursuit of anyone’s dreams. I agreed with almost everything she wrote. Almost.
In her caption, Kardashian West stated that her privilege and money didn’t get her to this point.
But that’s not true.
Though her resolve to do more good may have informed her decision to become a lawyer, her determination may keep her engulfed in a tedious study regimen, and her perseverance may lead to her success in this
The path toward becoming a lawyer is, by structure, very classist. In America, most people become lawyers by taking the traditional route of attending law school sometime after university, and to simply be a law student already requires a great deal of financial ability. Many law schools forbid their full-time students, particularly 1Ls (first-year students), from holding jobs during the school year. Other schools limit full-time students to working only 20 hours a week.
The reason for the restriction is that full-time law students take, at minimum, 12 hours of class a week, and the American Bar Association suggests studying two to three hours for each hour of class, so between class and outside study, a law student is studying somewhere between 36 and 48 hours a week. Being a law student is a full-time job. To also have a regular job is nearly unendurable.
My law school is in expensive-expletive Washington, D.C., and with school’s already daunting cost of attendance plus a high rent, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of ways to stack up enough money to live. (Don’t worry. I’m signing my life away to even more students loans. I’m not crying; you’re crying.) Even still, I’m typing this from a place of privilege, as most of the upfront financial burden will be on my parents. Not everyone can say the same.
People from lower socioeconomic classes don’t have the luxury of not working. Without scholarship, family money, a deficit, or a lottery win, meeting the financial demand of a full-time law student is simply impossible. Taking the Bar costs several thousand dollars. I’m almost sick thinking about it.
Enter my tiny––yet significant––issue with Kardashian West’s assertion.
Becoming a lawyer is not easily accessible. Again, I support Kardashian West’s efforts to become a lawyer. Many may view her route as a shortcut, but I don’t. Though most people traditionally become lawyers by way of law school, several people also do it her way. She’ll be studying just as long––longer really––as any other law student and will take the same exam that any other hopeful Californian attorney will take. As she said, the Bar doesn’t care who you are, and studying the law is a lot of hard work––work that Kardashian West is putting in.
But hard work isn’t the only thing that got her here. Wealth, and its privilege, greatly helped her ability to create her own lane. And though the option is available to everyone, the access simply is not.
Registering for the California Bar Exam, on its own, is godly expensive. Bar preparation tools are expensive. Childcare, to be away to study, is expensive. Tutors are expensive. The privilege of access is also significant here. Van Jones introduced Kardashian West to Jessica Jackson. Jackson and Erin Haney are not just Kardashian West’s mentors or even “regular” lawyers––Jackson and Haney are the co-founding national director and national policy director, respectively, for #cut50, a national organization fighting to reduce the prison population, where Kardashian West is doing her legal apprenticeship.
Wealth matters. Access matters. Privilege matters. Unfortunately, those facts bleed all over the law. A guilty rich person is more likely to beat a conviction than an innocent poor person. Similarly, a rich studier of the law is more likely to be successful than poorer student––not because the former doesn’t study just as diligently or the latter has a lower IQ but because the rich, plainly, have access to more resources.
Perhaps I’m writing this because I just finished reading Outliers, where Malcolm Gladwell, through storytelling and documented research, shows how much access affects success and the trajectories of people’s lives. Perhaps I’m writing this because I’m very broke and trying to figure out how to survive law school without an income. The point is I’m writing the truth.
I’m not writing this to diminish the very real work I’m sure Kardashian West is putting in, nor am I trying to squash her goal or downplay the path she’s on to achieve it. I love the law. I truly can’t wait to become an attorney, and I cheer on anyone who wants to do the same. But I firmly believe it is irresponsible to say “that’s not the case” to those who observe that wealth and privilege play a part in success. To trivialize wealth and brush it off as something that doesn’t matter is not right. To insist that only hard work breeds success is disingenuous, in any situation. Kardashian West and others with the privilege of wealth and access have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, but they shouldn’t compare themselves to those without boots.
Anyway, cheers, Kim! I truly wish you well on your torts essay and the rest of your law career.
Your future colleague,
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