Kim Kardashian West is following in the footsteps of her late father, famous lawyer Robert Kardashian.
Kim Kardashian West is following in the footsteps of her late father, famous lawyer Robert Kardashian.
In a revealing interview with Vogue for the May 2019 cover, Kim reveals she's currently studying to become a lawyer. She began a four-year apprenticeship with a law firm in San Francisco last summer and plans to take the bar in 2022. In California, you can become a lawyer without graduating college if you apprentice with a practicing lawyer or judge.
Kim, of course, has been praised for convincing President Donald Trump to grant clemency for Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old inmate who had been serving life without parole for a first-time, non-violent drug offense, last June.
"I had to think long and hard about this," she says about her surprising new venture, before sharing the moment she wanted to become a lawyer. "The White House called me to advise to help change the system of clemency, and I'm sitting in the Roosevelt Room with, like, a judge who had sentenced criminals and a lot of really powerful people and I just sat there, like, Oh, sh**. I need to know more. I would say what I had to say, about the human side and why this is so unfair. But I had attorneys with me who could back that up with all the facts of the case. It’s never one person who gets things done; it’s always a collective of people, and I've always known my role, but I just felt like I wanted 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, I could do more."
She says her experience with Johnson was a "turning point" for her.
"I made a decision to go to the White House when everyone was telling me, 'Don't go, your career will be over; you can’t step foot in there,'" she recalls. "And I was like, ‘It’s my reputation over someone’s life?’ Weigh that out. People talk sh** about me all day long. It will just be another story about me versus someone getting their life back."
“I never in a million years thought we would get to the point of getting laws passed," she adds about the FIRST STEP Act, which reforms the federal prison system and was passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump last December. "That was really a turning point for me."
But Kim says she's always had an interest in law, particularly, when her late father was part of the defense team that represented O.J. Simpson.
“On the weekends they used our home as an office, with Johnnie Cochran and Bob Shapiro," Kim recalls. "My dad had a library, and when you pushed on this wall there was this whole hidden closet room, with all of his O.J. evidence books. On weekends I would always snoop and look through. I was really nosy about the forensics."
This summer, she plans to take a test administered by the state. If she passes, she will get to continue three more years of studying to become a lawyer. Kim is clearly serious about her studies and says she actually got a 100 on her first test.
"First year of law school, you have to cover three subjects: criminal law, torts, and contracts," she explains. "To me, torts is the most confusing, contracts the most boring, and crim law I can do in my sleep. Took my first test, I 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."
On Wednesday, Kim tweeted about her first ever solo Vogue cover, and said it was a dream come true.
"I've dreamed of this moment for so long, many said it would never come," she wrote. "Words cannot begin to express how much of an honor it is to have my first solo US cover of @VogueMagazine. ... I remember as a little girl flipping through my mom’s subscription each month and dreaming of one day gracing the cover of this iconic magazine. Thank you to the incredible Anna Wintour for your support as always, it means the world to me."
Clearly, Kim has a lot on her plate these days. ET spoke with the reality superstar earlier this month, and she talked about expecting her fourth child via surrogate, who's expected to give birth in early May. Watch the video below for more:
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