A twelve-week plan for the NextGen bar exam.

Here is ours: one subject a week, every integrated set and performance task assigned to a specific week, a benchmark every Sunday, and a taper at the end. It assumes you have outlines or a course for reading the law. The Bench is where you find out what you can do with it. That’s our name for the practice app that comes with membership: the question bank, the sets, the tasks, the grader, and your record, in one place. This page is the order to work through it in.

Two honest notes before the plan. First, no one has published real evidence for how long you need to study for this exam. It’s had one administration so far, so twelve weeks is a professor’s judgment, not a sourced fact, and the FAQ says so plainly. Second, it’s written in weeks, not dates. On this page, count back from your own exam date and start where the math puts you. On the member dashboard it fits itself to your exam. With room, it runs the full twelve weeks and ends the day before the exam. With less, subjects share weeks. It also works around the rest days you choose. Retakers have their own eight-week version below.

How every week runs

• Day 1 A timed drill session in the week’s subject, Foundation tier first. Tag every answer sure or unsure; the tags are the point.
• Days 2-6 That subject’s multiple-choice questions, plus this week’s integrated question sets, one client’s matter told in pieces, timed as the exam times them. Then one session made only of questions you have already missed, starting with the ones you got wrong while feeling sure.
• Once a week One written task, graded point by point. Read the evidence behind every point, then set your own score. Yours is the one that counts.
• Sunday Run the Practice Benchmark. It ends in a score band, a range rather than a predicted score, and that says how the week went. Watch the trend across weeks to see whether the gap is actually closing.

Plan on about ninety minutes a day, six days a week. That’s roughly thirty-five minutes of timed questions at the exam’s own pace targets, thirty minutes reading the explanations for what you missed, and twenty minutes working your gaps. On a day with an integrated set, add its twenty-eight minutes. On task day, add the full hour. Your course or outlines fill the rest of your study day. The Bench is only for practice, and that’s deliberate: it’s not where you learn the law in the first place.

Exhibit · The docketTwelve weeks · exam February 23 to 24

36of 84 days · week 6

9days filed running

6sessions behind plan

Filed 27 of 30 days

Week	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon
Week 1Contracts	Dec 1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Week 2Torts	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
Week 3Evidence	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Week 4Civil Procedure	22	23	24	25	26	27	28
Week 5Real Property	29	30	31	Jan 1	2	3	4
Week 6Constitutional Law	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Week 7Criminal Law & Procedure	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
Week 8Business Associations	19	20	21	22	23	24	25
Week 9Integration	26	27	28	29	30	31	Feb 1
Week 10Integration	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Week 11Sharpening	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Week 12Taper	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
ExamFebruary 23	23	24

A day is FILED once you have done every session planned for it. A dot marks a day you missed; you can still catch up later that week, and the behind count shows when you have. The gold mark is that week's Readiness Benchmark. Striped days are your rest days, and the paler days are still ahead.

Weeks 1 to 8 · one subject owns each week

In each subject week, finish that subject’s easiest questions, the Foundation tier, and most of the middle tier, Administration. Stretch questions wait for weeks 9 to 11, when they hurt the right amount. The written tasks alternate between the two formats, the standard memo and the legal-research task, so both are familiar long before exam week.

Taking the exam in July 2028 or later? NCBE adds Family Law as a ninth memorized subject with that administration. NCBE PUBLISHED On The Bench, a plan set to an exam on or after July 2028 adds a Family Law week after Business Associations. That makes thirteen weeks, or nine on the retaker version, and The Solaine Relocation moves into that week. Earlier exams keep the plan as written, because until then family law arrives only with the law provided.

Weeks 9 and 10 · integration

The exam doesn’t ask one subject at a time, so these two weeks stop doing that. Mixed timed drills across every subject on your exam at the two harder tiers, Administration and Stretch, weighted toward whatever your record says is weakest. Practice on your gaps steps up from once a week to twice, and stays there. We save three sets for exactly this moment:

The Crosswalk Settlement, one of our integrated question sets, because a single client’s matter carries three subjects at once. Then two sets built on law the exam hands you rather than law you memorized. The Solaine Relocation and The Varenholt Codicil cover family law and wills. Both appear at every administration now, and both always arrive with the statute attached. We schedule them because each one gives you a statute you have never studied and grades what you do with it. Your exam tests that skill everywhere, including on law it supplies. Practicing on doctrine you’ve never studied is the only honest way to build that skill.

One written task a week, as always: a research task one week, a standard task the next.

Week 11 · sharpening

The hardest tier of questions, Stretch, in your three weakest subjects, ranked by what your record says rather than by how you feel. Review sessions on everything you got wrong while feeling sure, until that pile is empty or nearly so. One research task under strict timing. Two full timed run-throughs this week, midweek and Sunday, to tighten your pacing.

Week 12 · taper

Nothing new. Light mixed practice at the easiest tier to stay warm, the last written task early in the week, one final Benchmark by Thursday. Then the logistics you can actually control: the same laptop that passed the system check, the charger, and the questions worth asking about your venue’s network. Rest is part of the plan, so it’s on the schedule.

The accounting

Twelve weeks take you through everything once. That means all 1,194 original questions on a first pass, all 18 integrated sets, and all 12 performance tasks. The tasks are six standard and six research, one a week, which is why the plan runs twelve weeks and not ten. On top of that, thirteen or more full timed run-throughs, and sessions built from your own gaps all the way through, which serve your missed questions back to you. That is how the same bank of questions keeps teaching you after you have seen all of it once. Every number here is checkable against the published counts, which we update the same day we update the bank.

Eight weeks, for retakers

The compressed version for a July taker turning to February. The same week, but with one or two written tasks a week, and two subjects sharing each week because you’re reviewing, not learning it for the first time.

What you can check

• Independent of NCBE
• Professor and attorney authored and overseen
• Seventeen years with bar students
• Every claim labeled by its source
• No pass guarantees, no predicted questions
• We check every question seven ways before you see it

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

You work the plan on The Bench, which is our name for the practice app that comes with membership. That’s 1,194 original questions in the exam’s own formats, eighteen integrated sets where the facts unfold and nothing closes behind you, and all twelve performance tasks. AI grading shows its reasons and lets you overrule it. Your record tracks every answer against how sure you felt, and one tap turns your misses into the next session. Full access is $399, one payment, everything through the July 2028 administration, and fifteen questions are free to try.