Journal Title
Second Draft
Volume
36
Issue
1
First Page
1
Document Type
Article
Publication Information
2023
Abstract
Despite an understandable desire to play ostrich—to dig our heads into the sand so we cannot see and, therefore, can entirely ignore what is about to happen—change is coming to legal education. In July of 2026, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) will begin to phase out the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) and will administer a new national licensing exam for law school graduates. This reality means that, depending on the jurisdiction, at least some part-time students who matriculated in 2022 and full-time students who will matriculate in 2023 will be faced with a new final hurdle before attorney licensure: the NextGen Bar Exam (NextGen Exam).
The shift to this new exam is not a nominal change; in fact, it is a complete reimagining of the bar exam. The NextGen Exam forgoes the UBE’s stalwart components—the Multistate Bar Exam, the Multistate Essay Exam, and the Multistate Performance Exam—in favor of mixed-format, integrated “item sets,” challenging examinees to navigate doctrine and skills through a combination of short-answer, multiple-choice, multiple-answer, fill-in-the-blank, and lawyering task-based questions. Moreover, the NextGen Exam reduces doctrinal coverage5 and increases the lawyering skills tested in two ways. In addition to expanded testing of the lawyering skills previously tested on the UBE—issue spotting, legal writing, and investigation and evaluation—the NextGen Exam will also test new lawyering skills, including legal research, client counseling and advising, and client-relationship management.
This forthcoming shift from the UBE to the NextGen Exam will require institutional and curricular adjustments, both big and small. However, given the timing, professors—especially skills professors—cannot simply wait for larger changes in legal education to take hold before reassessing their own coverage and pedagogy. Instead, professors must explore ways to integrate NextGen skills into their existing courses today to prepare students for the new challenges of the NextGen Exam. For skills professors and clinicians everywhere, this expanded skills coverage is both exciting and daunting. It is exciting because teaching skills is our love language. It is daunting because many of our existing skills courses are overfilled and our grading load is already overflowing, especially in light of the feedback-heavy nature of skills instruction.
Recommended Citation
Maggie Eilertson & Melissa Shultz, Change Is Inevitable. Exhaustion Is Optional: Get Your Students NextGen Ready with an Upcycled MPT, 36 Second Draft 1 (2023).
Recommended Citation
Maggie Eilertson & Melissa Shultz, Change Is Inevitable. Exhaustion Is Optional: Get Your Students NextGen Ready with an Upcycled MPT, 36 Second Draft 1 (2023).