JFK Jr. Takes Bar Exam for Third Time

Assistant Dist. Atty. John F. Kennedy Jr. took a New York State bar examination for the third time today under the pressure of losing his job if he flunks again.

Kennedy, 29, was one of 7,400 hopefuls taking the exam today and Wednesday at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

Results of the current test will not be announced until early November.

On the line for the son of the late President is his $30,000 job. “All assistants get three chances,” said Colleen Roche, a spokeswoman for Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert Morgenthau. “It’s a longstanding office policy.”

Kennedy is a 1989 graduate of New York University School of Law. He took his first bar exam in November and, after learning he flunked, took it again in February and failed again.

He vowed then to study hard and take the exam again.

His cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also failed the bar exam in 1982 and resigned as an assistant district attorney amid charges of drug abuse. He entered a drug treatment program, received a suspended sentence and probation, and eventually was admitted to the bar in 1985.

Kennedy, the only son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, has been named the nation’s “sexiest hunk” in several popularity polls. A bachelor who lives quietly in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he patronizes some of the city’s trendiest restaurants and nightspots in the company of generally unidentified young women, but he has also been linked with Madonna, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts.

Kennedy’s sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, 32, passed the bar exam on her first try three years ago. She is the mother of two small children and is not now practicing law.