It’s official! Kim Kardashian is a law grad: On May 21, Kardashian shared that she had graduated from her law apprenticeship program. It took her six years rather than the usual four—due to COVID and her various family and work commitments—but she celebrated with a backyard graduation ceremony in typical Kardashian style.
Yet it’s worth remembering that there are quite a few other major celebrities with law degrees. That’s right: Beyond inspiring some of film and television’s most indelible performances—Hepburn and Tracy in Adam’s Rib; Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird; Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde; the casts of Law Order and The Good Wife—the practice of law has also lured more than one creative into its time-honored thrall. Here, a list of very famous people you may be surprised to learn have law degrees:
Kim Kardashian
“I finally graduated law school after six years!!!” wrote Kim Kardashian on her Instagram Stories in May 2025, ringing in her achievement with a graduation ceremony in her backyard. Though, Kardashian did not actually attend law school; she instead chose the Law Office Study Program, an alternative four-year commitment (as Kardashian didn’t graduate college) that allows would-be lawyers to apprentice in a law office or judge chambers to complete the course.
Kardashian did her apprenticeship at a San Francisco firm in 2018. Then, in December 2021, she shared that she had passed California’s first-year law students’ exam, otherwise known as the baby bar exam, on her fourth attempt.
Jessica Jackson, one of the attorneys sponsoring Kardashian’s legal education pursuit, shared during the DIY ceremony that Kardashian has completed 5,184 hours of legal study to gain the certification—all while raising four children, running businesses, filming, and advocating for others in legal cases. While Kardashian will still have to complete the official bar exam, she’s well on her way to following in her father Robert Kardashian’s footsteps.
Bridgit Mendler
In May 2024, the actor and former Disney Channel star officially graduated from Harvard Law School, after beginning the course in 2021. In her time studying for her Doctor of Law (JD) degree, she was president of the Harvard Space Law Society from 2022 to 2023.
Alongside her law degree, Mendler also holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is studying for a PhD there.
Gemma Chan
The Eternals and Crazy Rich Asians actor studied law at Worcester College, Oxford, subsequently landing a plum training contract at the London law firm Slaughter and May. But rather than take it, Chan enrolled at the Drama Centre London, where she was spotted by the film producer Damian Jones. “On the whole, it is quite a different part of the brain: Law is very analytical, and acting is more instinctive and emotionally driven,” she told Modern Luxury Magazine in 2019. “But, it does come in handy with learning lines―and reading my own contract.”
Gerard Butler
Long before imparting his own bloody justice in films like 300 and Law Abiding Citizen, the Scottish-born actor earned a place at the University of Glasgow School of Law, later taking a position as a trainee lawyer in Edinburgh. Not long after, however, he moved to London to pursue an acting career.
Andrea Bocelli
The Italian tenor studied law at the University of Pisa, working for one year as a lawyer before he turned to music—a passion of Bocelli’s since he was a child. “Probably it is better for many clients that I changed my direction!” he joked in a 2015 interview. “But I was happy to study [law], and I was a good student, I finished my studies. And everything that you learn is useful in life.”
Jerry Springer
After receiving his JD from Northwestern University in 1968, the late Jerry Springer—who went on to preside over one of the most debauched syndicated talk shows ever to hit American airwaves—became a partner at the Cincinnati law firm Grinker, Sudman Springer, working there from 1973 to 1985.
Rebel Wilson
In 2000, the Pitch Perfect star left the University of New South Wales with two degrees: a B.A. in theatre and performance studies and a Bachelor of Laws. “I thought I’d become an excellent lawyer or politician,” she recalled in 2011. “I studied law at university and was sort of grooming myself to go into that kind of career.” By 2003, however, she’d booked a recurring role on the popular Australian comedy series Pizza/Fat Pizza.
John Grisham
The prolific novelist, known for legal thrillers like A Time to Kill and The Firm, knows of what he writes: Grisham graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law with a JD in 1981 and practiced law for about a decade.
John Cleese
As a young man, the future Monty Python member and Fawlty Towers star read law at Downing College, Cambridge, earning his degree in 1963. “I think I would have been quite good at law, but I think I would have found it ultimately very empty,” Cleese told Yahoo! in 2013.
Geraldo Rivera
The former talk show host attended the Brooklyn School of Law in the late 1960s, going on to work at the National Lawyers Guild and Community Action for Legal Services in New York. His efforts representing Puerto Rican activists in East Harlem eventually opened the door to his first reporter role at WABC-TV.
Jeff Cohen
After capturing hearts with his iconic young role as Chunk in the Goonies, the retired child actor graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2000. Just two years later, he cofounded the Cohen Garden entertainment firm in Beverly Hills.
