She got her degree from the prestigious Close Cover Before Striking Institute by drawing the picture of the lawyer. If she had drawn the pirate instead, she could now be looting off the Somali coast.
“So, I am, like, totally dee Captain now.”
OK, I’ll stop fuckin’ around for a sec. This has been widely misreported, so let’s cover what she did and didn’t do. It’s not as impressive as some headlines would have you believe, but it is a genuine accomplishment.
First, she never went to law school, and she received no degree at all. Indeed she has no college degree of any type, and I’m not sure she ever graduated from high school. Her Wikipedia page just says that she “attended” high school.
She did, however, complete her legal studies through an alternative to traditional law school. In California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, you can become a lawyer without attending law school if you complete a structured apprenticeship or law office study program. This program allowed her to apprentice with a law firm and study the law while working under the supervision of a licensed lawyer.
If you were a boy scout, you may remember how you moved up in rank or got a merit badge. There was a checklist of things you had to accomplish, and your mentor had to sign off when you met each requirement. The law office program works the same way. The mentor has to review your work and certify that you have accomplished every one of the things you’d have to do in law school.
Kim has completed her legal education, passed the “Baby Bar” (First-Year Law Student’s Examination) on her fourth try, and recently passed the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), which is required to practice law in California. She still needs to pass the California Bar Exam to become a licensed attorney in California. She’ll have to grind hard to do that, because the exam has a 44% failure rate, despite the fact that all of the testees did go to law school and most of them study their asses off to pass.
You may remember that Kim’s dad was a lawyer. He became famous, at least briefly, for defending his close friend OJ Simpson, “Uncle Juice,” as he was called by the Kardashian character in American Crime Story. (David Schwimmer played Kardashian. Cuba Gooding played Uncle Juice.)
Kim Kardashian may have one of the craziest stories about how she became a celebrity. She comes from a wealthy family, her father was a famous lawyer, but she never had any specific talent, she wasn’t even considered very pretty… Until her famous sex tape was leaked in 2007, she became one of the Internet’s ready-made subcelebrities. Her family took advantage of this and created a huge brand with her name, products, reality shows and she really became a celebrity.
You have to give a tip o’ the hat to Kim’s mom and her advisors. They managed to turn one mediocre sex tape into a billion dollar business despite the fact that nobody in the family has even the slightest glimmer of talent or wit. Like it or not, that was some marketing genius.
I was under the impression that her friendship with Paris Hilton made her famous first then the sex tape to add notoriety.
As for talent…. well Kris Kardashian appears to be a very talented publicist.
If memory serves, it came out as a “Celebrity Sex Tape” but her only claim to fame was being Paris’s friend.
But, yeah, they successfully parlayed that into a billion dollar industry for the whole family, so, no hate, well played.
Yes, she was a sub-celebrity because she was friends with Paris Hilton. It was the era of sub-celebrities. However, this sex tape made her more famous and she gradually used it to become the celebrity she is today.
What really made her famous was the sex tape scandal, don’t try to change the story, buddy. You can like her etc, but that’s the reality lol. And yes, her mother and her advisors played a key role in marketing her business after the sex tape scandal, they used that to boost her name.
Passing the MPRE isn’t all that hard. Remember three simple rules. Do not to cheat your client, do not co-mingle your funds with your client and do rat out your friends. Remember those three rules and you will probably pass the ethics exam. I believe you on;y need to get 58% of the questions right to pass. The bar exam is more difficult, especially California’s. California not only has the hardest bar exam, but its exam is given over three days, instead of the 2 of every other state. As I understand it, California completely revamped its exam just a few years ago, and if anything, actually made it harder.
Here is the thing about the bar exam (or at least 49 of them). Three years of law school does not really teach you what you need to know to pass. That’s why most law school graduates take an 8-10 week bar prep course after graduation. Don’t get me wrong, three years of law school certainly help you pass. Perhaps most importantly, it teaches you how to think like a lawyer and how to answer a law school exam essay question. The subjects on the Multistate are studied in law school, but many law schools don’t offer classes on state law because their graduates go on to take different bar exams. However, the bar prep course will teach you all the law you need to pass the exam. That’s why every state requires you to graduate from law school or do an apprenticeship with a lawyer before you are allowed to take the exam. That is either about guaranteeing a minimum level of competence for all licensed attorneys or about reducing competition. You decide.
I’m a member of the State Bar of California. The 44% pass rate is specifically because California allows students from unaccredited law schools and folks who never went to law school to take the bar exam. Those are the people failing, and failing multiple more times when they retake the exam over and over again.
The Bar doesn’t care, however, because every time someone wants to retake the exam, it’s more money in the Bar’s coffers, and the only thing the Bar cares about is lining its own pockets.