'NextGen Bar Exam Is Complete Abandonment Of Competence As Standard' For New Lawyers

Following up on my previous posts:

• Jay Mitchell (Justice, Alabama Supreme Court), The New NextGen Bar Exam Puts DEI Over Competence (May 24, 2023)
• Josh Blackman (South Texas), NCBE Dumbs Down The Bar Exam (July 13, 2023)

Josh Blackman (South Texas), A Former Law Examiner Comments On the NextGen Bar Exam:

I received an email from a person who worked as a state board of law examiners. With permission, I reproduce the email, stripping any reference to the person's state. ...

In my view, the UBE, and the *** Supreme Court through its adoption, dropped the standard of "minimal competence" to an alarming level.  I could not, in good conscience, continue to serve and resigned.  The NextGen Bar Exam represents the complete abandonment of competence as a standard.  I sincerely hope that the *** Supreme Court does not adopt it.  Unfortunately, they will probably blindly defer to the "experts" at the NCBE.

Even since *** adopted the UBE, I have been hoping that it would not prove to be the disaster for professional competence that I feared it would.  And while the jury is still out on that point, the NCBE now wants to do away with any testing of the applicants' abilities to apply the facts to the law.  Any state that adopts the NextGen bar exam will have abandoned its professional obligation to ensure that new lawyers are minimally competent.

Reuters, New Bar Exam Gets Lukewarm Reception in Previews:

The public got its first glimpse of the new bar exam set to debut in July 2026 when the organization designing it released a selection last week of sample questions—and some legal educators aren’t impressed with what they saw.

Reactions to the preview range from concerns that the questions are too easy to complaints that the revamped test won’t be significantly different from the current one, which law graduates will take July 25 and 26.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• NCBE, Preliminary Recommendations for the Next Generation of the Bar Examination (Jan. 5, 2021)
• NCBE, Board of Trustees Votes to Approve Testing Task Force Recommendations (Jan. 29, 2021)
• NCBE, Public Comments Sought On Proposed New Bar Exam (March 29, 2022)
• Jay Mitchell (Justice, Alabama Supreme Court), The New NextGen Bar Exam Puts DEI Over Competence (May 24, 2023)
• NCBE, Content Scope For NextGen Bar Exam (May 26, 2023)
• NCBE, First Samples Of New Question Types For NextGen Bar Exam (July 12, 2023)
• Josh Blackman (South Texas), NCBE Dumbs Down Bar Exam (July 13, 2023)