This article originally appeared in The Bar Examiner print edition, Winter 2025-2026 (Vol. 94, No. 4), pp. 43–44.By Kara Smith, PhD
Legal licensure is entering a period of transformation unlike any other in recent memory. Although the law itself evolves gradually, how lawyers work and the tools they employ are changing at a pace that challenges long-standing assumptions about how we assess readiness for practice. As we prepare to launch the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination in July 2026, it has become increasingly clear that this moment is about more than a single exam. It represents a broader shift in how the legal profession defines competence, prepares new attorneys, and protects the public in a rapidly changing world.
People often ask me why NCBE invested so deeply in reimagining the legacy Uniform Bar Examination. It wasn’t for one discrete reason, be it to raise pass rates, to modernize the exam’s visual look, or to align the experience with how today’s candidates study or use technology. Research makes clear that the NextGen UBE is as rigorous—if not more so—than the legacy UBE. Its updated, modern design and digital ecosystem are not ends in themselves; they are required to measure the skills, reasoning, judgment, and ethical capacities that define competent practice today. NCBE undertook this effort for holistic reasons: to ensure that legal licensure continues to reflect what competent, ethical practice requires in an evolving world.
The NextGen UBE arrives at a moment when the competent practice of law demands more integrated reasoning, greater technological fluency, and a deeper ability to apply legal knowledge across diverse and dynamic contexts. Traditional examinations have measured foundational knowledge for generations; expectations in that area remain central. But the profession now requires more. Future attorneys must be able to analyze complex problems, exercise judgment under pressure, synthesize information from multiple sources, negotiate and resolve disputes, and communicate clearly and professionally with clients and stakeholders. These skills are not additions to contemporary practice of law; they are its foundation.
Developing the NextGen UBE—through years of researching, piloting, prototyping, and seeking input from jurisdictions, educators, practitioners, and judges—signals the direction licensure must take in the future. Performance tasks, integrated question sets, and refined constructed-response items are not innovations for innovation’s sake; they enable assessment of the full arc of legal reasoning, including ethical decision-making and professional responsibility, as it arises in realistic practice contexts. These updated test items also capture emerging expectations of entry-level lawyers, including the ability to operate responsibly and flexibly in technology-enabled environments. For example, artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how legal work is performed and the competencies new lawyers must bring to the practice. As these tools become embedded in legal workflows, technological and ethical competencies will be inseparable. Responsible AI use, i.e., recognizing its limitations, maintaining client confidentiality, verifying accuracy, and exercising independent judgment, will define a core dimension of professional responsibility. To ensure the NextGen UBE continues to reflect these and other realities, another national practice analysis will be essential, providing empirical insight into the knowledge, skills, and ethical capacities the modern lawyer needs.
Throughout the NextGen era, legal licensure testing will continue to evolve along three dimensions: (1) the sophistication of the content we measure; (2) the digital environments in which we measure it; and (3) the inferences jurisdictions must be able to draw from exam results. The content dimension reflects the profession’s growing emphasis on reasoning, judgment, negotiation, client interaction, and communication across increasingly complex practice settings. The digital dimension acknowledges that entry-level lawyers must be prepared to work in technology-enabled contexts, and that fairness is inseparable from the usability, accessibility, and stability of platforms through which high-stakes licensure assessments are delivered. And the inference dimension underscores the responsibility NCBE bears to ensure that exam results remain valid, reliable, comparable across jurisdictions, and thus meaningful for policy decisions.
Supporting this evolution has required substantial investment. Building a multiplatform digital ecosystem that supports test delivery and scoring, jurisdictional administration, and candidate readiness is no small undertaking. Neither is designing a blueprint that reflects the complexity of legal problem-solving or constructing scoring models that capture performance across multiple integrated skills. The investment forms the backbone of a system designed to serve jurisdictions, uphold admissions standards, and ensure that the next generation of lawyers enters the profession well prepared for contemporary practice.
The NextGen UBE is not an end point; it is the beginning of a new era. As we learn more from the October 2024 prototype and recent January Beta administrations, and as jurisdictions adopt the new exam between 2026 and 2028, we will continue refining the assessment, improving the digital experience, strengthening the data that supports scoring and comparability, and deepening our understanding of how candidates demonstrate the skills and knowledge the public expects of the legal profession. This work is iterative by design. A modern licensure exam must evolve alongside the profession it serves. We can take confidence in knowing that the legal profession is not alone in this shift; multiple fields have already moved to digital, skills-focused licensure models that reflect modern professional practice.1
The legal profession is grounded in tradition, but it is equally shaped by the demands of its time. The NextGen era will bring new technologies, new modes of legal service delivery, and new expectations from the public. The NextGen UBE is NCBE’s signal that legal licensure must meet those realities thoughtfully and responsibly. It also reaffirms NCBE’s long-standing commitment to protecting the public, supporting jurisdictions, and ensuring that the attorneys who enter practice can shoulder the responsibilities ahead.
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- Licensure bodies in medicine (USMLE, COMLEX-USA); nursing (Next Generation NCLEX); and accounting (CPA Evolution) have recently modernized their assessments to reflect the integrated, technology-enabled demands of contemporary professional practice. (Go back)
Kara Smith, PhD, is Chief Product Officer for the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
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