They ditched high school for law school. Tulare teens youngest in California to pass bar

Sophia Park doesn’t think much about her age, even as reminders stack up all around her.

Earlier this month, the Office of the District Attorney in Tulare County announced that the teenage law clerk had become the youngest person to pass California’s bar exam — a record she took from her older brother Peter who, at just age 18, works as a prosecutor in the DA’s office.

Since then, there’s been a flood of photo ops and interviews (including from the New York Times) mostly scheduled through the Parks’ father, acting as an informal press agent.

“I forget that I’m 17, sometimes,” says Sophia, standing outside the Tulare County courthouse, wearing a dark blue suit that seems fitting the profession if not her age. She hopes to join the DA’s office as a lawyer once she’s sworn in as a licensed attorney in March.

“We could not be prouder as an office family,” Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said in a news release. “It really is quite remarkable the success we have had with our law students, interns and law clerks attaining their professional dreams. The dividends for our office have been immense.”

Both Sophia and her brother were 13 when they started law school at the online-only Northwestern California University School of Law, under a provision in the state’s bar rules that allowed students to apply without having a high school diploma or college degree if they’ve completed the requisite College Level Proficiency Exams.

Their father, a patent agent and material science PhD from Korea, had been looking into law school for himself when he found the provision and pitched it to his son.

“He came into my room one day and said, ‘Do you want to be an attorney and go to law school right now?’”

At the time, Peter didn’t know even know what lawyers did. But he was intrigued by the idea, as it was a path that no one had really taken before.

Sophia on the other hand, pretty much always knew she wanted to study law and would tell people she wanted to become a judge.

The law is a such part of people’s everyday lives, and she relishes in the idea that “every day I come to work and I know I’m making a positive impact.”

At first, both siblings split time going to high school during the day and doing online course study in the evening. Eventually they took the the California High School Proficiency Exam in order to solely focus on their studies.

“I tried to make it as easy as possible,” says Peter, who took and passed the bar exam in July of last year.

The California bar exam is given twice a year and is generally considered one of the hardest in the United States. Of those who took the general bar exam in February, for example, 33.9% passed.

While many law students wait until after they graduate law school to begin focusing on the notoriously difficult two-day bar exam, Peter spent a full four years in test-prep mode. He also did the math, and realized that even if he scored poorly on the essay portion of the test, he could make it up on the multiple choice section and still pass the test.

Not that Peter thinks he or his sister are super smart or particularly special. But they were taught that nothing is difficult.

“It’s just unfamiliar,” he says.

What he and his sister have accomplished is the result of “hard work and blind faith that things will work out.”

Or, to quote their father, quoting Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

Lives outside the law

While graduating law school and entering into the job world seems like a lot for someone not yet old enough to drink, the pair manages to find down time.

The entire family gathers for a weekly TV night, where they watch mostly Korean dramas.

Sophia loves reading. Her father turned her on to books about mindset and the psychology of success, though she also likes fiction and recently finished the 7,200-page “The Legend of the Condor Heroes,” which she describes as an “Asian version of the Avengers, before the Avengers.”

Peter took up stenography, the shorthand writing commonly used in courtrooms. He even built his own stenography keyboard and started a business selling inexpensive keyboards to other hobbyists.

“In my free time I manage my business,” he says. He does get help from his father.

Will the record be broken again?

And there’s another generation of Parks waiting in the wings.

Their younger sister is currently in her second year of law school. She’s 13 and if she continues on to pass the bar, she will take over Sophia’s record, based on her birthday and the date the exam results are typically reported.

The pair say their 8-year-old brother has also hinted he wants to follow in the family footsteps and become a lawyer.