Page 22 - 2025 May June Magazine

A New Generation of the Bar Exam
– A Look at the NextGen Bar
By Owen Leupold
By now, you've probably heard that
Washington Bar Exam takers
will face the NextGen Bar Exam
starting in July 2026. But what exactly
does the next generation of the Bar
Exam look like, and how are students
being prepared to take it? And more,
what should lawyers and law firms know
about students who will have taken the
NextGen Bar? Currently, there are few
satisfying answers from the National
Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE)
to these questions. The biggest takeaway
is that the NextGen Bar is "designed to
balance the skills and knowledge needed
in litigation and transactional legal
practice" and is intended to "reflect many
of the key changes that law schools are
making today.” If you think that sounds
vague, you aren't alone. Let's dive into
the details and decipher what the NCBE
might mean.
The NextGen Bar purports to align
more with contemporary real-world
law practice by emphasizing alternative
dispute resolution, clinical exposure,
and legal writing and analysis. This
means examinees will face “integrated
question sets,” which combine short-
answer, multiple-choice, and legal
drafting questions. Examinees will also
tackle longer performance tasks that
have been retooled to more accurately
reflect contemporary practice; examinees
are given a fact pattern and applicable
case law and asked to draft a memo to a
fictitious senior associate or client.
The NextGen Exam is shorter than the
current Universal Bar Exam (UBE),
consisting of one and a half days of
testing instead of the current two-day
exam. Examinees will test for six hours
on day one and three on day two.
NextGen Bar takers will use their own
computers to complete the exam at
proctored locations. Like the UBE, the
NextGen Bar will support reciprocal
admission in jurisdictions administering
the NextGen exam. During the transition
period from the UBE to NextGen,
jurisdictions will accept either score, with
each jurisdiction setting an expiration
for when it will no longer accept UBE
scores. Also, like the UBE, the NextGen
will be graded by individual jurisdictions,
with the NCBE providing the technology
platform to conduct grading.
NextGen Bar takers can expect 40%
of the exam to be multiple-choice
questions, 25% to be integrated question
sets, and approximately 35% to be
devoted to longer performance tasks. So
what foundational legal doctrines are
examinees expected to know for the Next
Gen Bar Exam?
The NextGen Bar will test the following
foundational concepts, with Family
Law joining the group beginning in
July 2028:
2 2 P I E R C E C O U N T Y L A W Y E R | M a y /J u n e 2 0 2 5
Civil Procedure
Contract Law
Evidence
Torts
Business Associations
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law
Real Property
Currently, the Uniform Bar Exam
(UBE) tests twelve foundational
concepts. Absent from the NextGen
Exam are Conflict of Laws, Family Law
(until 2028), Trusts and Estates, and
Secured Transactions. Importantly and
confusingly, Trusts and Estates will
remain on the NextGen through at least
February 2028, but will only appear in
performance tasks and multiple-choice
questions.
The NCBE adjusted the content of
the exam according to three criteria:
frequency (likelihood of encountering
the topic in general entry-level practice),
universality (likelihood of encountering
the topic in specialized entry-level
practice), and risk (likelihood of serious
consequences if a new attorney does
not have knowledge of the topic).
Reducing the number of topics tested
allows for the NextGen exam to focus
more on lawyering skills and less on