(via iamhalsey Instagram)
Like most stories about embarking on a legal career, this one begins with a broken ankle and a string bikini.
Halsey, the 25-year-old chanteuse from New Jersey, took to Instagram yesterday to show off her latest injury and to regale us with a stream of consciousness caption worthy of James Joyce.
I took my brace off my ankle cause it was itchy and now I need to put it back. I made a quiche and fresh spinach butternut squash ravioli. Law is fun but hard. Beautiful sky. Can’t stop watching avatar. and judging from the baby pic I’ve been a disassociating little freak who romanticizes the 70s for my whole life. That’s all, thank you.
As it turns out, Halsey managed to break this ankle tripping over a dishwasher door, which is awful and awfully relatable at the same time. But most observers are zeroing in on the most disturbing element of this caption. Yes, someone is willingly rewatching Avatar.
But also, she informed her fans that “law is fun but hard” without any context, sending everyone into a tailspin to figure out what she meant since there is nothing about the law that is remotely fun. One follower decided to get to the bottom of it and the answer was horrifying:
When Instagram user @@nathaniel_carney asked the performer why she is studying constitutional law, Halsey explained, “I’m studying for the bar exam!”
Generally one would need a law school degree or, you know, a college degree, to take the bar exam. But with Kim Kardashian lighting the way for fellow celebrities to parachute into a legal career without taking on any of the debt, it seems Halsey may be looking into an alternative path to the ESQ.
And there’s no reason to close off these paths to people who genuinely want to help people. Kim’s pursuit of law has turned her into a successful advocate for the incarcerated so even if she never gets a license, the work she’s put in on the mere possibility of getting there has proven a tangible benefit to the public. But that’s why we have bar exams. They’re tests developed to weed out people who lack formal doctrinal learning — a holdover from an era when most lawyers didn’t go to law school. The lunacy is that we’ve allowed the bar for professional schools to get lowered far enough that we need J.D.s to take yet another test to prove they’ve achieved mastery of the material that celebrities can aspire to in their spare time.
Who knows where this will go. The lockdown is taking its toll on celebrities too and perhaps studying law is just Halsey’s version of getting way too into baking sourdough and she’ll lose interest in the subject before she reaches the Kardashian stage.
Keep watching the Instagram… if her swimsuit pics start revealing Memento tattoos spelling out the Rule Against Perpetuities, we’ll know she’s taken it up a notch.
Halsey Is Studying Law So She Can Take the Bar Exam [PopCrush]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.