Search interest around this exact question spikes every time a new season of Kardashian's reality shows revisits her law journey, and the numbers themselves are simple once separated from the noise: three failed sittings, one successful fourth attempt, zero confirmed attempts at the full bar exam so far.

How many times has Kim Kardashian failed the bar exam? The short answer is that she failed the First-Year Law Students' Examination (FYLSE), commonly called the baby bar exam, three separate times before finally passing it on her fourth attempt in December 2021. She has not, as of the most recent public reporting, sat for or passed the full California bar exam, so she is not yet a licensed attorney.

That distinction matters. A lot of headlines blur the baby bar with the actual bar exam, and the confusion has followed Kardashian's law journey since she first announced it in 2018. This article walks through exactly what she failed, how many times, when, and what still stands between her and a law license.

Kardashian's decision to pursue law without attending law school made international news, largely because it was such an unconventional move for someone already famous in an entirely different field. It also meant every exam attempt, pass or fail, became public in a way most law students never experience. Each of her three failed sittings was picked apart in entertainment coverage, which is part of why the exact number and timing of her failures gets muddled so often online.

Kardashian did not go the traditional law school route. California is one of the few states that still allows a "reading the law" apprenticeship, where an aspiring lawyer studies under a practicing attorney or judge instead of attending an ABA-accredited law school. She began this apprenticeship in 2018, studying roughly 18 hours a week under attorneys while working full time.

Anyone who studies law through this apprenticeship path in California must first pass the baby bar exam within their first year, then keep passing it (or retaking it) before they can sit for the actual bar exam. It is a gatekeeping test built specifically to weed out students who are not on track to pass the real thing later. Kardashian's law school choice made the baby bar the very first hurdle in her legal career, and it turned out to be a tall one.

Her mentors on this path included attorney Jessica Jackson, a criminal justice reform advocate, and attorney Erin Haney. Kardashian has said her interest in law grew out of her criminal justice reform work, including advocacy that led to clemency for several federal inmates. That advocacy work is what first connected her with practicing attorneys willing to supervise her apprenticeship, rather than a plan to attend law school from the start.

Historically, the apprenticeship route is not new. Figures like Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Darrow famously became lawyers by reading law under a mentor rather than attending a formal law school, since that option barely existed in their era. Kardashian's path revived public interest in an option that had become rare, since fewer than a handful of states still permit it and only a small number of candidates use it each year compared with the tens of thousands who graduate from ABA-accredited law schools annually.

Kardashian sat for the baby bar exam four times between 2018 and 2021, and she failed the first three. Each attempt is offered twice a year, in June and October, so her three failures span roughly three years of retakes layered around her career and family schedule. She has spoken publicly about the toll each failed attempt took, describing long study sessions squeezed between work commitments and the frustration of coming up short.

She finally passed on her fourth try, sitting for the December 2021 session of the bar exam 2025-style eligibility track and clearing the score threshold. California's State Bar does not publish individual candidate names for pass/fail results, so her passing score and exact numeric result were never made public; the confirmation came from Kardashian herself and her mentor, attorney Jessica Jackson.

Each of the three failed sittings reportedly followed the same pattern: months of structured study, a full day of proctored testing, and then a wait of roughly six to eight weeks for results. Candidates who fail are given a numeric score but not a detailed breakdown of which essay or subject dragged the score down, which makes it hard for any retaking student, celebrity or not, to know exactly what to fix before the next attempt.

By her own account, the fourth attempt succeeded because she narrowed her studying to the specific weak points revealed in her prior scores, working with tutors to drill essay structure and issue-spotting rather than re-reading the same outlines. That kind of targeted review, rather than simply repeating the same study plan, is a pattern seen across many repeat test-takers who eventually pass.

Putting the dates together: Kardashian began her apprenticeship in 2018 and sat for her first baby bar attempt that same year, missing the passing score. She tried again in 2019 and 2020, failing both times, before her fourth attempt in the fall of 2021 finally succeeded, with the pass confirmed in December 2021.

That four-attempt span lines up with the maximum the State Bar allows for apprenticeship students, since candidates who don't pass by their third try can lose credit for prior study time. Passing on attempt four, just inside her program's requirements, was widely reported as a relief for her after years of public scrutiny over each failed sitting.

It's worth noting the exam calendar itself: the FYLSE is administered in June and October each year, meaning a student who starts studying in 2018 and needs four attempts is realistically looking at a minimum of roughly two years between the first and fourth sitting, even without any missed cycles. Kardashian's timeline, spanning 2018 through late 2021, reflects both the twice-a-year cadence and at least one cycle where she did not sit for the exam while regrouping her study plan.

Once the pass was confirmed, Kardashian publicly thanked her mentors and described feeling validated after years of criticism from people who doubted the apprenticeship path could work. She has said the experience changed how she talks to her own children about failure, framing each failed attempt as part of the process rather than a reason to quit.

The baby bar's low pass rate is by design. The State Bar of California created it in the 1980s specifically because pass rates for apprenticeship and unaccredited law school students on the full bar exam were far lower than for ABA-school graduates. Making students clear a tough early screening test before continuing was meant to catch struggling candidates sooner rather than after years of unaccredited study.

That design is exactly why three failed attempts, like Kardashian's, is not unusual. Many candidates need multiple sittings, and the exam is proctored under the same strict, closed-book conditions as the full bar, with essay questions scored against the same rigorous curve.

The exam itself runs about four hours and blends multiple-choice questions with essay questions, all focused tightly on Contracts, Torts, and Criminal Law. Because the subject list is so narrow, graders expect very precise, rule-by-rule answers; vague or general essay responses tend to score poorly even when the writer understands the broader legal concept. That precision requirement is one reason repeat attempts are so common among apprenticeship candidates who haven't had formal law school exam training.

Data published by the State Bar over the years has shown that repeat takers, those on their second, third, or fourth attempt, pass at meaningfully higher rates than first-timers, since they've already been through the format once and know what the graders are looking for. Kardashian's eventual pass on attempt four fits that broader pattern rather than standing out as unusual.

So what comes next for Kardashian? To actually practice law, she would still need to finish her required years of supervised study, then pass the full California bar exam, which covers far more subjects and takes two full days to complete. There is no confirmed public record, as of the most recent reporting, that she has sat for that exam.

For anyone following her journey as motivation to attempt an alternative path into law, the lesson from her three failed attempts is straightforward: the baby bar is genuinely hard, multiple attempts are common even for motivated, well-resourced candidates, and passing it is only step one. Reviewing real bar exam questions and building a consistent study routine matters more than any single sitting.

California's apprenticeship candidates typically need a minimum of four years of supervised study before they're eligible to sit for the full bar exam, regardless of how quickly they clear the baby bar. That means even someone who passes the baby bar on the first try is still years away from being license-eligible, and someone who needed four attempts, like Kardashian, faces the same multi-year runway once the baby bar is behind them.

Kardashian has continued to speak publicly about wanting to finish her legal studies and eventually take the full bar exam, framing it as a long-term goal tied to her criminal justice reform advocacy rather than a traditional legal career. Whether or how that plays out is still unresolved based on everything reported so far.

Most people who fail the baby bar the first time do not fail because they didn't study; they fail because the exam format and scoring curve are unlike anything in undergraduate or most graduate coursework. Essay answers are graded on precise legal issue-spotting, not general writing quality, and partial credit is limited if a candidate misses a core rule statement.

Kardashian's own account of her study process, roughly 18 hours a week for years, shows that consistent effort does not guarantee a pass on the first, second, or even third try. What ultimately worked on her fourth attempt was the same routine, repeated with more targeted review of prior weak areas.

A common mistake among repeat takers is re-reading outlines instead of practicing timed essays under real exam conditions. Grading rubrics reward candidates who can spot every issue in a fact pattern and state the correct rule concisely within a strict time limit, a skill built almost entirely through practice, not passive review. Tutors who work with baby bar retakers often say the single biggest score jump between attempts comes from adding weekly timed practice essays, exactly the adjustment Kardashian has described making before her successful fourth sitting.

It's worth remembering that a baby bar pass is not a career credential on its own; it simply confirms a student can continue their apprenticeship toward the full bar exam. Kardashian has said she plans to keep studying toward that goal, but licensure as a practicing attorney requires completing the full course of required study hours and then sitting for, and passing, the two-day bar exam itself.

Until that happens, she remains a law student under California's apprenticeship framework, not a licensed lawyer, regardless of how the baby bar pass was covered in headlines at the time.

This is a distinction worth remembering any time a celebrity's legal studies make headlines: passing an early screening exam is a real, hard-won milestone, but it is not the same as being sworn in as an attorney. The gap between the two can span several more years of study, another lengthy exam, and a character and fitness review by the State Bar before a law license is ever issued. Coverage that skips this nuance tends to overstate her progress, so keeping the count straight (three failures, one pass, no full bar attempt yet) is the accurate summary.

For readers researching their own bar exam prep rather than Kardashian's story specifically, the same fundamentals apply regardless of which path got you to test day: consistent practice under timed conditions, focused review of your weakest subjects, and realistic full-length practice sessions before the real exam. The baby bar's narrow three-subject scope actually makes it a useful place to build those habits before tackling the much larger full bar exam.

Whether your interest is the celebrity angle or you're studying for your own bar exam, understanding exactly what was failed, and how many times, keeps the facts straight instead of relying on recycled headlines.

Kardashian's story has also drawn renewed attention to California's apprenticeship option itself, with more people asking whether reading the law is a realistic alternative to a traditional JD. For most aspiring lawyers, an accredited law school remains the more common and often lower-risk path, but her repeated attempts and eventual pass show that the alternative route, while difficult, is not impossible for someone willing to keep retaking a hard exam until it clicks.

The bottom line: three failed baby bar attempts, a fourth successful one, and no confirmed sitting for the full bar exam yet. That's the accurate, fact-checked version of Kim Kardashian's bar exam record, separate from the shorthand headlines that often blur the baby bar and the full exam into one story.

If her journey has you curious about your own bar prep, timed practice on real exam-style questions is the fastest way to find out which subjects need the most work before test day.