Login | April 01, 2025
Here comes the NextGen Bar Exam
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: March 28, 2025
Starting in 2028, law school graduates sitting for the bar exam will join 33 other jurisdictions by taking the NextGen Bar Exam.
That would seem to cover most current law school freshmen, so pay attention if you fall into that category.
In a press release, Michel Jendretzky, attorney services director at the Supreme Court of Ohio, said "[t]he skills required of our new lawyers have changed over time, and an exam that better tests those skills is needed. The NextGen Bar Exam is designed to meet that need. By testing foundational skills together with legal concepts, the NextGen Bar Exam attempts to achieve a practice-ready assessment. This aligns with our goals of advancing professionalism and public trust in the judiciary."
The new test is considerably shorter than the old bar exams.
Modernizing the exam by shortening it seems to follow along with the modern, tech-based tendency to shorten every kind of communication between people.
Once upon a long, long time ago, the bar exam was three days of literal hell, with two full essay days sandwiched around a day-long multi-state exam. It was like being lost in the desert for a month.
Then the National Conference of Bar Examiners began to modernize.
In 2020, bar exams began being taken online for the first time.
Then a few years later, the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) began the modernization of the test itself.
The UBE, which is currently being given in Ohio, is considerably different from, and shorter than, the old test, stretching over only 12 hours and two days.
The NextGen exam will be even shorter than that—six hours on the first day and three hours on the second day.
Whether the quality of lawyers these days is deteriorating, and shorter bar exams are a contributor to that, is a question for another forum.
The new exam is designed to test something called alignment with “the real world responsibilities of newly licensed attorneys, focusing on nine areas of legal doctrine and seven foundational lawyering skills. These include key subjects such as civil procedure, evidence, and criminal law, along with skills such as legal research, client counseling, negotiation, and issue analysis. Ethical considerations are woven into the exam underscoring the importance of professional integrity.”
The nine “foundational concepts and principles” on the exam, starting with July 2028, will be: Business associations, civil procedure, constitutional law, contract law, criminal law, evidence, family law, real property and torts.
The “foundational lawyering skills” covered will be: Legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, client relationship and management.
According to the NextGen website, “other areas of legal knowledge will also appear on the NextGen bar exam to provide the context for testing one or more foundational lawyering skills, but examinees are not expected or required to develop a base of knowledge in those areas. For those questions, examinees will be provided with the necessary legal resources (e.g. statutes, regulations, and case law) to demonstrate the skills being tested.”
There will also be an Ohio law section on the new bar exam and the court has instructed its board of Bar examiners to “to re-evaluate the current Ohio Law Component examination to ensure it sufficiently supplements any skills and concepts lacking in the NextGen Bar Exam, such as IRAC-style writing and estates and trusts.”
According to the NextGen website, the exam will be taken on examinees’ own laptops at in-person, proctored testing locations.
As with the current Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), examinees may transfer their NextGen bar exam scores between jurisdictions that participate in the UBE portability program.
A candidate could pass the bar in Ohio, take only the New York part of the New York bar exam, and then practice in that state.
Or potentially the opposite, as the Supreme Court news release states that portability could favor lawyers moving to Ohio after passing the bar in another state: “Portability of scores is crucial to attracting legal talent to and retaining legal talent in Ohio and was a key factor in the recommendation to adopt the NextGen Bar Exam in Ohio.”
New world, new tech, new Ohio (?), new bar exam.
Better lawyers from shorter tests?
Guess we’ll see.