Law Schools Examine Pedagogy As NextGen Bar Exam Looms

ABA Journal, Law Schools Examine Pedagogy as NextGen Bar Exam Looms:

With the dawn of the NextGen bar exam approaching, some law schools are adjusting curricula to better prepare students for the test’s specific demands.

“This could be a revolutionary change in legal education,” says Wanda Temm, a professor and the director of bar services at the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Law.

Around the country, discussions are happening about how to best prepare students for the exam, which starts its rollout in July 2026 and is set to replace the Uniform Bar Examination, which is due to sunset after the February 2028 test.

Along with moving from paper and pencils to computers, the new exam will have an added emphasis on the skills that junior attorneys need, such as research, client management and dispute resolution over memorization, says Beth Donahue, a senior assessment design specialist at the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

The NextGen exam will have fewer stand-alone multiple-choice questions, and the traditional essay questions will be replaced with integrated question sets, requiring students to read and apply primary legal and factual resources to certain fact patterns under time pressure.

Those changes are inspiring some law schools to step back and reconsider how and what students are now taught throughout law school and how they are assessed.

For instance, for a skill such as client counseling, “students are now not assessed in law school the way they will be assessed on NextGen,” Temm says. “It’s not like the student is going to do a simulated interview.”

In response to the exam’s changes, the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Law is developing a new course for 2Ls, tentatively called Learning Skills 3, which includes reviewing NextGen-style questions, plus foundational skills, she adds.

The course, scheduled for the second semester of the 2024-2025 academic year, will be “team taught” by five different professors, each taking two weeks to dive deeply into their subject area, Temm says.

“One person would do the client intake and interviewing; another would do fact investigation, and [another] one would do negotiations, and our librarians are on board are on board to do our advanced legal research,” she adds. “And then we would also have a writing component.”

Some schools are bringing in help. Currently, the Law School Admission Council is working as a consultant to four law schools, with four more inquiring about their services, to map out current curricula against NextGen assessment methods, tested subjects and skills.