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This article originally appeared in The Bar Examiner print edition, Fall 2025 (Vol. 94, No. 3), pp. 3–4.By Judith A. Gundersen

It often takes a village to build something important; in the case of the NextGen UBE, it takes a city!

Quick question: How many NCBE employees and contractors are working on the launch of the NextGen exam?

       A. 25
       B. 50
       C. 75
       D. 100+

The answer is D! Of our roughly 150 employees, close to 100 are working on the NextGen UBE. We also have two dozen contractors who are mainly helping on the infrastructure builds for score services, administrator and candidate portals, grading platform, and study aids.

It has been a long, expert-led journey to this point. The NextGen process started in 2018 with listening sessions, followed by a nationwide practice analysis, and then a year of synthesizing feedback and data and working with law school faculty, practitioners, and judges to craft the initial NextGen exam design. Starting in 2021, we developed, in concert with external stakeholders, detailed content scope outlines. We then began drafting and pretesting NextGen bar exam questions. Some of our earliest hiring in this area focused on lawyer-­editors dedicated to test development and constructed-response grading experts. As we moved forward, the scope widened to include IT and UX/UI experts, project managers, psychometricians, communications specialists, and operations staff to ensure smooth jurisdiction onboarding. Finally, NCBE’s teams in human resources, accounting, investigations, meetings and education, and other departments kept things running smoothly amid this undertaking.

There are also dozens of volunteers—­law school faculty, practitioners, judges, and justices—drafting and reviewing exam items. Before we started developing the NextGen exam, we had 10 drafting committees. We now have 15, and soon will have a dedicated grading committee as well. These groups mainly draft and review asynchronously but do meet in person at least on an annual basis.

In addition to these test development volunteers, dozens of bar admissions staff, bar examiners, justices, and law faculty serve on our NextGen policy committees, helping to provide insight on NextGen score portability, review test questions and grading materials, and give feedback that helps NCBE enhance the digital products and services we offer to jurisdictions and candidates.

We could not launch this exam without all these dedicated and hard-working people. Our NCBE staff members—both those who are long-serving and those who have recently joined to help us get the NextGen UBE to its first administration—are second to none. All are collaborative, creative, and resourceful. They are deeply invested in successfully delivering the exam to candidates and jurisdictions. For those of us who have been with NCBE a long time (me, for one!), the NextGen project has transformed our work and culture. And, for the next three years, we will be developing, scoring, grading, and score reporting two exams at the same time; it has been and will continue to be a tremendous undertaking.

I am grateful to everyone who has had a hand in getting us this far and ushering in a new era of lawyer licensure. In short, there is a vast network of professionals both at NCBE and in the larger legal community working on the NextGen UBE. We have different roles in this project, but we are all invested in ensuring a successful implementation for jurisdictions, candidates, and the profession as a whole. 

Until the next issue,

Judith A. Gundersen

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