Six years into her law journey, three bar exam attempts, and Kim Kardashian has done what Kim Kardashian does best turned an L into content.
The mogul just dropped the debut campaign for UPDATE, a canned energy drink she’s co-founded, and instead of running from her most publicised failure, she’s leaning all the way in. The launch introduced the brand with a commercial built entirely around a self-referential joke about her failed bar exam attempt, one that’s already drawn attention well beyond the beverage industry.
For context, this isn’t Kim making light of a one-off slip. She’s failed the exam three times in two years, most recently the full California Bar in July 2025, which she confirmed on Instagram with the now-iconic line: “Well… I’m not a lawyer yet, I just play a very well-dressed one on TV” a nod to her role on All’s Fair.
And the law dream isn’t dead, it’s just paused. She skipped the February 2026 exam and has no plans to sit for the July 2026 session either, with insiders saying she wants to go into her next attempt feeling fully prepared rather than rushing back underprepared. The earliest she’d likely retry is February 2027 assuming she registers before the January 4 deadline.
What's your hot take on this story?
Here’s the thing about Kim: she doesn’t hide her failures, she monetises them. Instead of letting “did Kim Kardashian ever pass the bar” become a running internet joke at her expense, she wrote the punchline herself — and used it to launch a whole new product line. It’s the same playbook that’s built SKIMS into a billion-dollar empire: take the narrative, own it, sell it back to the culture that was already talking about it.
Say what you want about the bar exam scorecard the marketing instincts are undefeated.
