“I just hope that one day I can start a firm that will help with prison reform.”
When Kim Kardashian West announced earlier this year—through a Vogue cover story, natch—that she would be pursuing a career in law, it left people confused, to say the least. But Kardashian West had already stepped out of her comfort zone when she visited the Oval Office last summer to seek clemency for Alice Marie Johnson, an African-American woman sentenced to life imprisonment for drug trafficking. Kardashian West became involved with the case after viewing a viral Mic video about Johnson.
At yesterday’s New York Times DealBook Conference, she sat down beside Kris Jenner to talk to Andrew Ross Sorkin about their multimedia empire and where it’s headed. She also revealed that she hopes to open her own law firm one day, even though the steps to get there will take away from time with family and friends. “I love it, and I just hope that one day I can start a firm that will help with prison reform.”
Her interest in law can be traced back to when she met with President Donald Trump about prison reform early in 2018. The experience, she tells Vogue, made her realize that if she wanted to continue to be effective in that field, she needed to educate herself.
“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, like, Oh, shit. I need to know more,” she told Vogue. “I would say what I had to say, about the human side and why this is so unfair. But I had attorneys with me who could back that up with all the facts of the case. It’s never one person who gets things done; it’s always a collective of people, and 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. 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.”
At The New York Times conference, there was discussion about whether Kardashian West’s relationship with President Donald Trump is beneficial to her work. “The president has done amazing things in prison reform. I will also speak up when I feel like something is not how I feel like the world should be — and that can be immigration or other things.” While many people advised her not to go to the White House, Kardashian West says she believes in putting aside differing political opinions for the greater good.
“I would go see anyone in power that would have that decision to change someone’s life.”