The exam · A plain-English reference

What the NextGen bar exam actually is.

The NextGen UBE runs nine hours over a day and a half, with three kinds of questions in place of the old separately named exams.

You memorize eight subjects, the questions themselves hand you a good deal of the law, and you get a score on a 500 to 750 scale. Here is that structure, and we aren’t trying to sell you anything.

But For · practice for the NextGen bar exam

Exhibit · The rollout56 jurisdictions
July 2026+10 · 10
July 2027+13 · 23
Feb 2028+4 · 27
July 2028+24 · 51
Signaled1
No date4
Each mark is one jurisdiction, from NCBE’s published adoption list as of August 2026. Any jurisdiction can still change its date.

Someone selling prep wrote almost everything you will read about the NextGen UBE, ourselves included. So this page follows the same rule as the rest of the site. Anything we say about how NCBE builds the exam comes from NCBE’s published materials and official statements, and when we are reasoning instead of reporting, the sentence says so. NCBE PUBLISHED means it came from NCBE. ANALYSIS: OURS means the thinking is ours. Nothing here reproduces exam content, and nothing here predicts what any administration will ask.

What it is, and what it replaced

The NextGen UBE is the licensing exam that began replacing the MBE-based Uniform Bar Exam with the July 2026 administration. NCBE PUBLISHED The National Conference of Bar Examiners develops it. Each jurisdiction adopts it on its own schedule. You take it on your own laptop, through NCBE’s secure platform, at a site your jurisdiction runs.

The exam most candidates still picture has a multiple-choice part, a written part, and a performance test, each with its own name, its own day, and its own study strategy. The NextGen doesn’t work that way. It runs as three question families on one platform, with one scaled score, and two of the three ask you to write. Multiple choice is still there, and it still takes the biggest share of the day, but it’s no longer the thing NCBE built the exam around.

The other big difference is what you have to carry into the room. The old exam rewarded a huge amount of memorized law. The NextGen tests fewer subjects, then hands you much of the governing law inside the questions and expects you to read it accurately and apply it as written. NCBE PUBLISHED That one choice changes almost everything else about the exam.

Why it was rebuilt this way

You don’t have to guess at the intent. NCBE names the skills the exam measures: legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, counseling, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship management. NCBE PUBLISHED Seven skills, and the new question types are there to test them.

Read that list beside the old exam and the gap is obvious. A four-option multiple-choice bank can test issue spotting and analysis well. It cannot test whether you can rank a mandatory authority over a persuasive one, or whether you can weigh a settlement against a client’s actual stated objectives rather than against the abstractly better legal outcome. Those are things practicing lawyers do constantly and the previous format never asked about. No previous bar exam has ever asked you to weigh a settlement against what the client actually wants. ANALYSIS: OURS

So the short honest answer to “why did they change it” is that the exam moved from testing what a new lawyer had memorized to testing what a new lawyer can do. Whether it works will take several administrations and real score data to tell, and anyone claiming to know now is guessing.

How the exam runs

Nine hours, over a day and a half, in three three-hour sessions. NCBE PUBLISHED Each jurisdiction arranges the testing sites, not NCBE. That detail might sound like logistics trivia, but the first administration showed it matters. We come back to it below.

Three question families carry the whole exam, and they divide the time and the score unevenly:

The three question families

  • Standalone multiple choice

    Two formats live here. The first is the familiar one: four options, pick one. The second is new: six options, pick exactly two. The select-twos carry real partial credit, so one right pick still scores and a blank scores nothing, which means there is never a reason to leave one empty. NCBE PUBLISHED Early administrations look and feel much like MBE questions on purpose, and the mix of formats is meant to widen from there.

  • Integrated question sets

    This family is genuinely new. A set hands you one client matter and one role to play, a solo practitioner, a public defender, an associate. It builds the problem out of realistic documents: interview notes, a lease, a police report, a deposition excerpt, sometimes an excerpt of a statute or an edited opinion. Then it asks a mix of multiple-choice questions, short answers, and medium-length written analysis, and the facts keep arriving as the matter develops. NCBE PUBLISHED Some sets are doctrinal. Others have you drafting or editing a document, or counseling a client whose goals and limits you actually have to work with, not just note.

    New facts arrive mid-problem, and nothing you have already answered closes. The navigation pane returns you to any question in the section, and no later document is needed to answer an earlier component. The part that catches people out is that almost nobody goes back. ANALYSIS: OURS

  • Performance tasks, in two kinds

    The standard performance task comes straight from the MPT and will feel familiar to anyone who has seen one. You get a file, a library of provided authorities, and one long writing assignment on a 60-minute clock. The instructions narrow the task, and the graders score the formatting rules too. NCBE PUBLISHED

    The legal-research task is the new one, and it shows the redesign most clearly. It runs four multiple-choice questions, a short answer, and a medium-length writing assignment. What it tests is research judgment: which authority is primary and which is secondary, which is mandatory and which is only persuasive, and what a case actually held as against what it said in passing. It also tests whether the library you were handed answers the client’s question at all. NCBE PUBLISHED A library with a gap in it is a real test item, not a mistake, and saying so is the right answer.

Notice the mismatch in those three numbers. Multiple choice takes the biggest share of the clock, but performance tasks carry roughly a third of the score, so the minutes and the points don’t line up. A study plan built on hours spent instead of points available aims at the wrong thing. ANALYSIS: OURS

Those three families break down into five question formats, and each one asks you to do something different. The formats page takes them apart one by one, including the select-two partial-credit math worked all the way out.

What is tested, and what is not

You still have to memorize eight subjects: Contracts, Evidence, Civil Procedure, Business Associations, Real Property, Torts, Constitutional Law, and Criminal Law and Procedure. NCBE counts that last one as a single subject, not two. NCBE PUBLISHED That list is shorter than what the old exam expected you to memorize, and the cut is deliberate. Starting with the July 2028 exam, NCBE adds Family Law as a ninth memorized subject; Trusts and Estates stays a subject the exam hands you the law for. NCBE PUBLISHED

Two subjects sit slightly apart. Family law and trusts and estates are on every administration already, in a performance task and sometimes an integrated set, and both hand you the law instead of asking you to have memorized it. From July 2028 family law also becomes one of the subjects you carry in your head; trusts and estates does not. NCBE PUBLISHED

Each subject got narrower too

If you’re planning a study cycle, the more useful fact is that the scope narrows inside each subject, not just across the list. NCBE publishes a content scope outline for each administration, and it’s specific enough to read as a syllabus. When we mapped our own question bank against the outline for the July 2026 through February 2027 administrations, doctrines you’d swear were on the bar aren’t listed at all. Evidence, for instance, drops the residual exception and the compromise-and-plea rules of 410 through 415. Real property loses zoning and land use, equitable conversion, installment land contracts, and the Rule Against Perpetuities. And under criminal law, entrapment, insanity as a doctrine, and several whole categories of crime are gone. ANALYSIS: OURS, from mapping NCBE’s published outline

Two cautions on that paragraph, and we would rather say them than have you find them. First, NCBE republishes the outline for each administration, so a topic missing from one is not gone from the exam for good. Second, missing from the memorized outline is not the same as missing from the exam, because an unlisted topic can still show up if the question hands you the law. So read the outline yourself, treat it as your syllabus, and check that you have the edition for the administration you are registered for.

Five question formats, three never given before July 2026 A five-row table of the NextGen UBE’s question formats, grouped under the three published question families. Each format carries a mark in a column for past questions. Select-one and the standard performance task take a solid mark: past questions existed to practice on before July 2026. Select-two, the integrated question set, and the legal-research task take an open mark sitting on a red rule: none of them existed before the first administration, so no past questions existed for them. We show published shares per family: standalone multiple choice, roughly 40 percent of exam time; integrated question sets, just over a quarter of the exam; performance tasks, roughly a third of the score. Time share and score share are different measurements and are not summed. PLATE I · THE FIVE QUESTION FORMATS Five question formats · three had never been given before QUESTION FORMAT PAST QUESTIONS BEFORE JULY 2026 STANDALONE MULTIPLE CHOICE ROUGHLY 40% OF EXAM TIME Select-one Four options · one credited Select-two Six options, exactly two credited, with real partial credit INTEGRATED QUESTION SETS JUST OVER A QUARTER OF THE EXAM Integrated question set One matter · facts unfold · nothing closes PERFORMANCE TASKS, OF TWO KINDS ROUGHLY A THIRD OF THE SCORE Standard performance task A file, a library, one extended writing, on a sixty-minute clock Legal-research task Four multiple choice, a short answer, a medium writing, over a small library SOLID · PAST QUESTIONS EXISTED TO PRACTICE ON OPEN · NEVER GIVEN BEFORE THE FIRST EXAM IN JULY 2026 Time and score are measured differently, so the shares above are not added together. They are NCBE’s own figures, hedges and all.
Plate I · Before July 2026, three of the five formats had no past questions anyone could practice on.

Provided law, the deepest change

If you take one thing from this page, take this one. The exam regularly hands you a statute, a rule, or an edited opinion and expects you to apply that text, even where it reaches further than the rule you learned. It can even reach subjects outside the memorized syllabus entirely, supplying all the law required. NCBE PUBLISHED The criminal outline is explicit on the point: elements of crimes and defenses are tested on the basis of provided statutes. NCBE PUBLISHED

Provided law sounds like a mercy and is closer to a test of restraint. We went looking for the version of this we used to tell you, that the given statute contradicts the rule you memorized, and in NCBE’s published items it never does. What it does instead is narrower: it supplants a common-law claim, or adds conditions your outline has no entry for, or simply confirms what you already knew. The trap is not contradiction, it is scope. The keyed answer is usually the one that resolves less than your memory wants to, and the wrong answers are the ones that decide something the provided text left open. That is also just what lawyers do: nobody in practice applies the majority rule they memorized in law school without checking how far their own jurisdiction’s text actually reaches. ANALYSIS: OURS

What none of this changes is how much you have to know. NCBE’s Content Scope marks some topics with a star. NCBE PUBLISHED A starred topic is one you must know from memory, and NCBE may test it with no law provided at all. An unstarred topic may come with the text or without it, and where it comes without, NCBE expects you to recognize from memory that the topic is in play. NCBE PUBLISHED So provided law is not a shorter syllabus. It is a second thing to be good at, on top of the first.

Provided law: where a memorized rule can mislead you A branch diagram read top to bottom. One question that quotes a statute opens onto two routes. The memory route, drawn in a heavy line to stand for a practiced habit, runs: recognize the doctrine, then retrieve the memorized rule. The text route, drawn in a light line, runs: read the provided text, then apply it as written. For most of their length the two routes run parallel and tied together, because on most questions they reach the same answer. A red rule marks the point where the provided text departs from the rule the candidate memorized. Below that rule the routes separate: the heavy route ends at an open, red-outlined marker labelled the option the memorized rule supports, and the light route ends at a solid marker labelled the option the text requires. Practice makes an answer fast and hard to stop, which is usually what you want. Recall is still required, for the eight tested content areas, at the depth NCBE’s published outline sets. PLATE II · PROVIDED LAW Provided law · where a memorized rule can mislead you ONE QUESTION A QUESTION THAT QUOTES A STATUTE THE MEMORY ROUTE THE TEXT ROUTE Recognize the doctrine Read the provided text Retrieve the memorized rule Apply it as written ON MOST QUESTIONS BOTH ROUTES REACH THE SAME ANSWER WHERE THE PRINTED LAW DIFFERS FROM THE RULE YOU MEMORIZED The answer your memory would pick The answer the text requires HEAVY LINE · A PRACTICED HABIT LIGHT LINE · READ FROM THE PAGE PRACTICE MAKES AN ANSWER FAST AND HARD TO STOP. USUALLY THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT. You still need to know the law in all eight tested subjects, as deeply as NCBE’s published outline requires.
Plate II · When the law printed in the question differs from the rule you memorized, recalling the rule quickly stops helping and starts costing you points.

How NCBE scores it

Your score comes back on a 500 to 750 scale, and each jurisdiction sets its own passing line rather than a national one. NCBE PUBLISHED Results have historically taken months, not weeks.

Two more things are worth knowing before exam day. Select-two questions carry real partial credit, two points, one point, or none, so a guess always beats a blank. And on the standard performance task, the graders score formatting and instruction-following too, so an answer that is legally right and badly built still loses points.

What nobody has yet is a baseline. The first jurisdictions to adopt were small, and pass lines land on each jurisdiction’s own timetable, so there’s no public read on how hard it is. Any provider quoting you a difficulty rating, a predicted score band, or a pass rate for the NextGen is describing a feeling, not a measurement. That’s why our own score bands and difficulty estimates stay marked provisional, and they stay that way until there’s real data behind them. ANALYSIS: OURS

When it reaches each jurisdiction

Adoption is jurisdiction by jurisdiction, in four waves. The dates below come from NCBE’s published adoption list, checked against it in August 2026. NCBE PUBLISHED But each jurisdiction announces its own date, and sometimes changes it after NCBE publishes its list, so NCBE’s list can run behind. Before you build a study calendar on any date here, confirm it with your own bar admissions agency.

NCBE’s announcement of the first administration, read again on August 17, 2026, lists the same ten jurisdictions for July 2026 that we do, and the same thirteen joining in July 2027.

July 2026

The NextGen’s first administration. Connecticut, Guam, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, the Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Palau, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington.

Ten jurisdictions, roughly 2,624 applicants scheduled across sixteen testing sites.

July 2027

Thirteen more jurisdictions take up the NextGen. Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

February 2028

Four more switch to the NextGen: Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Montana.

This February is also the last time anyone gives the old UBE anywhere.

July 2028

The biggest wave: twenty-four states switch to the NextGen at once. Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

With California, New York, Texas, and Florida in, most people who take a bar exam in America now take the NextGen. California’s own added state-specific part starts no earlier than July 2029, per the California Supreme Court’s July 2026 order.

Unannounced

As of August 2026, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, and Puerto Rico had not announced a date. Mississippi had signaled adoption without one.

All fifty-six jurisdictions are here on one timeline. Pick yours.

Traces to NCBE’s published adoption list · verified August 2026

What the first administration showed

Roughly 2,624 applicants were scheduled across ten jurisdictions and sixteen testing sites for the first administration in July 2026. NCBE PUBLISHED Seven of the ten seem to have run without reported trouble. Two, Maryland and Missouri, were disrupted and finished the same day. And one didn’t run at all. Washington canceled its entire July exam after an on-site failure at its testing venue, and its standard-time test-takers never answered a single question.

The lesson for this page is narrow. NCBE’s position is that the week’s failures were local to the sites, in venue networks, on-site equipment, and local setup, and did not involve the testing platform itself. NCBE PUBLISHED The evidence is consistent with that. It is also cold comfort if you are the one sitting there. An exam taken on personal laptops in venues your jurisdiction manages can fail in ways the paper era could not, so find out what your jurisdiction does if that happens. The first-administration report is the full account, with a source on every claim. The two primary documents behind this section are NCBE’s statement on the July 2026 NextGen bar exam administration and its July 31, 2026 announcement that ten jurisdictions completed the inaugural administration.

What to understand before preparing

Five things worth settling before you spend a dollar or an hour.

Confirm your administration first. Everything else follows from whether your exam falls before or after your jurisdiction’s switch date. Check it with the bar admissions agency directly, not with a prep company’s chart, this one included.

Read the content scope for your exam date. NCBE publishes one for each administration: the official list of what that exam can test. It’s specific, and it’s shorter than the syllabus prep courses told you to expect. Reading it yourself is the best hour you’ll spend all cycle.

Outlines and drilling are different jobs. Knowing the rule is one thing; doing the format under a clock is another, and the second is what the new question families measure. Whatever you use for the first, the second needs practice in the exam’s own formats, and what actually builds that is a different question from what covers the syllabus.

Distrust confident numbers. Difficulty ratings, predicted score bands, and pass-rate promises all need score history, and this exam barely has any. Nobody can honestly give you one of those yet, whoever is selling it.

Practice the writing, not just the reading. Two of the three question families require written work, and the performance tasks alone carry roughly a third of the score. Written answers that nobody reads and nobody grades don’t get better.

Questions, answered plainly

How long is the exam?

Nine hours, over a day and a half, in three three-hour sessions, on your own laptop through NCBE’s secure platform at a site your jurisdiction manages.

Is it harder than the old bar exam?

Unknown, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. There’s no earlier NextGen to compare it to and no public score history. Right now, “harder” mostly measures what prep materials told people to expect, rather than the exam itself.

Do I still have to memorize the law?

Yes, for the eight tested subjects, at the depth NCBE’s published outline sets. What changed is how much extra law now arrives inside the questions. Reading that text and applying it exactly, even where it reaches further than the rule you learned, is itself graded.

Can I use old MBE question banks?

They still drill doctrine, and doctrine still matters. What they can’t drill is the select-two format and its partial credit, the integrated sets and the way their facts unfold, or the legal-research task, because none of those existed. Study only from old banks and you’ve practiced roughly one of the three families.

What happens if my testing site fails?

That’s a question for your jurisdiction, not for NCBE, and the answer differs by jurisdiction. The first administration produced one statewide cancellation, and the applicants affected were offered a choice of remedies. If it matters to you, ask your admissions agency what happens in that case, and ask before exam day rather than after.

But For is an independent publication and study product of Ink Forms Rivers, d/b/a But For, and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners or any bar examining authority. “NextGen UBE” is referenced solely to identify the examination. Structural and rollout information on this page traces to NCBE’s published materials and official statements and is provided for orientation only; registered applicants should rely on their own jurisdiction’s direct communications and on NCBE’s current published materials for anything they act on. We publish examinee experience, never exam content.

What you can check

The .ai is for convenience. The vetting is not.

Everything above is the exam. But For is the bench, our name for the practice app that comes with membership, built to match it format for format. It holds 1,194 original questions, including 444 select-twos with real partial credit, eighteen integrated sets, and all twelve performance tasks in both formats. An AI grader marks the writing and quotes the evidence it used. Three real questions are free to try, we publish the editorial standard, and founding access is there if the evidence convinces you.