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Kim Kardashian West is studying to be a lawyer, and you can blame the White House

Kim Kardashian West at the Criminal Justice Reform Summit in West Hollywood in November 2018.
(Jon Kopaloff / Getty Images)
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Kim Kardashian West is studying to become a lawyer, just like her dad was.

Yes, the same Kim Kardashian West who has a beauty empire and shapely selfies and a hit reality TV show. C’mon, there’s only the one.

“I had to think long and hard about this,” the 38-year-old tells Vogue for its May issue, referring to her decision to do a four-year apprenticeship with a law firm in San Francisco ahead of taking the bar, hopefully, in 2022. It was a decision she made last summer, the magazine says.

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Kardashian West has notably been lobbying the White House in recent years for the release of prisoners like Alice Marie Johnson. In the process, she says, she realized she was in over her head.

“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,” she said. “I need to know more.”

The beauty mogul has been working for months with attorneys Van Jones and Jessica Jackson — cofounders of a national bipartisan advocacy group on criminal-justice reform — with visits to the White House, to governors’ offices and to people who are imprisoned.

She says she would speak her piece about the human side of the equation, but the team of attorneys she was with would have all the facts of a case.

“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,” Kardashian West says. “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.”

The reality star’s priorities have also changed significantly since she was robbed at gunpoint in Paris in 2016. The robbery was blamed in part on Kardashian West’s flashy social media presence.

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Meanwhile, Van Jones invoked the “Legally Blonde” character Elle Woods in explaining Kardashian West’s skill as an in-person influencer at the White House, talking about her being “emotionally intelligent.”

“Kim understood that [President Trump] needs to be seen as taking on the system, and she helped him to see that there are people who the system was against and that his job was to go and help them,” says Jones. “And it was remarkable.

“So for people who have fallen for this media caricature of the party girl from 10 years ago who hangs out with Paris Hilton? 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,” Jones said.

Now someone needs to tell her to tune in to “Crazy Ex Girlfriend” reruns — just in case.

cdz@latimes.com

@theCDZ on Twitter and Instagram

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