By now you're probably familiar with the fact that Kim Kardashian West is using the free time she has, between her instagram posts and whatever else she does, to study The Law. As one of the most influential humans on the planet, if social media followers equate to influence--which they do because it's 2019 (compare her 145 million instagram followers to, for example, Barack Obama's 23 million)--her choice to go into the rather mundane profession that her father famously practiced has created quite a stir. The ruckus includes guffaws over the audacity she has to think she's smart enough to practice law, screaming accusations that she's just using her money and influence to get ahead, and, more accurately, predictions that she'd never be able to actually appear in court because the mere fact of her influence would tip the scales of justice too unfairly. Mostly, though, people are just confused about how she's going to sit for the California bar having never set foot in an accredited law school.

NDAs, #MeToo, and You

I got the idea for this post this past weekend when I was reading an article in Time (the one with AOC on the cover, I mean, can you even handle it?). The article was about Eliza Dushku (you’ll recognize her face from Buffy and Bring It On) and her “#MeToo Moment” (I have qualms with calling the public reliving of traumatic events a “moment” but that’s a topic for another day). She wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe about her most recent experience with sexual harassment on the set of her show Bull. She wrote the piece despite signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) as part of her settlement with CBS for $9.5 million - a ton of money but not as much as CBS would have paid her had she been able to complete her planned six-year contract with the network. Because Dushku feared litigation if she continued to discuss the settlement, for her interview with Time she tried to talk around the issue entirely. She did state, however, that “NDAs revictimize people. They give more power to the powerful. And as the less powerful person, you have to live in someone else’s fucked-up version of reality.” This quote, and Dushku’s story, are an apt example of why we should all be more aware, and wary, of non-disclosure agreements.