The practice half of bar prep, scheduled

Published August 12, 2026 · Every count on this page can be checked against the live question bank

A twelve-week plan for the NextGen bar exam.

Materials on their own never tell you what to do on a Tuesday morning. A schedule does.

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.

The shape of every week

• 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 The subject’s questions from the bank, plus this week’s integrated sets on the clock the exam gives them. One session built from your own misses, 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 Readiness 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.

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.

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 all eight subjects at Administration and Stretch, weighted toward whatever your record says is weakest. Practice on your gaps moves to twice a week from here on. Three sets are saved for exactly this moment:

The Crosswalk Settlement, because it runs three subjects through one client matter. And the two provided-law sets, The Solaine Relocation and The Varenholt Codicil: family law and wills, which don’t enter the exam until July 2028. We schedule them anyway, because each one hands you a statute you’ve 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 each week, as always: one research, one standard.

Week 11 · sharpening

Stretch tier in your three weakest subjects, ranked by your record rather than by your feelings. Sure-but-wrong review sessions until that pile is empty or small. One research task under strict timing. Two Benchmark runs this week, midweek and Sunday, to tighten 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 use the whole bench exactly once. That means all 530 original questions on a first pass, all 18 integrated sets, and all 12 performance tasks. That’s six standard and six research, one each week, which is why there are twelve. Add thirteen or more Benchmark runs, plus practice on your gaps running the whole time. It re-serves your own misses, which is how the bank keeps teaching you after that first pass. Every number in that sentence is checkable against the published counts, which move the same day the bank does.

Eight weeks, for retakers

The compressed version for a July taker turning to February. Same weekly shape, 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.

The plan runs on the But For bench. That’s 530 original questions in the exam’s own formats, eighteen integrated sets where the facts unfold and earlier answers lock, 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. Founding membership is $199 through August 31, one payment, everything through the July 2028 administration, and three real questions are free to try.