This article originally appeared in The Bar Examiner print edition, Spring 2025 (Vol. 94, No. 1), pp. 3–4.By Judith A. Gundersen
It sure doesn’t feel like the weather reflects the publication timeline as I write this column for the spring issue of The Bar Examiner. It was a brisk −12 degrees this morning when I walked the dog. She wisely decided to make it a brief outing.
NCBE’s Exam Support
Over 15,000 examinees sat for the February bar exam. We congratulate those who have learned that they passed and wish the best for those still awaiting results. Throughout exam preparation, administration, and scoring, NCBE teams serve candidates and jurisdictions with high-quality assessments, study aids, grading materials, scoring processes, and score reporting. NCBE’s support of the bar exam experience is vitally important to a valid, fair, and reliable exam and is part of our staff’s routine work. But even when not-so-routine questions and issues arise in the run-up to, during, or following the exam, our test operations, psychometrics, security, and communications teams are on call to assist.
Such assistance can take many forms. Sometimes additional test materials are needed, both standard and nonstandard, shortly before an exam administration. We do everything we can to fulfill a late request. Or a particular assistive technology may not function as intended notwithstanding our and the jurisdiction’s testing. We work closely with jurisdictions to pivot to a modality that satisfies the candidate’s needs. Infrequently, there may be administration-related issues such as power outages or noise disturbances at a test site that impact the testing experience. In such cases, our psychometricians and security teams can offer immediate assistance on possible remediation; this can extend to post-administration scoring analysis if applicable.
In short, an extensive, experienced NCBE team is on call to help address the expected and unexpected in the service of candidates. This is some of the behind-the-scenes support NCBE provides that, thankfully, most examinees never have to consider. We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with admissions offices to ensure a secure, fair, uniform, and smooth bar exam cycle.
We send all July candidates our best wishes for bar exam success.
Naming the NextGen Bar Exam
It’s now official—the NextGen bar exam is the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination. As of the date this magazine went to press, 39 jurisdictions, representing over two-thirds of test takers across the United States, have adopted the new bar exam.
From now until 2033, NCBE will refer to the current UBE as the “legacy UBE” to distinguish it from NextGen; from 2033 on, the new exam will simply be called the UBE. Why 2033? That’s the last year that we anticipate current UBE jurisdictions will accept legacy UBE scores for transfer.
Upcoming Events
As we look ahead, we have several stakeholder events planned around the NextGen bar exam, including a meeting of our Justices Advisory Group, NextGen jurisdiction monthly meetings, and the NextGen standard-setting event. We are excited that over 90 representatives from 43 jurisdictions are participating in standard setting with our psychometric team in May. Standard setting will provide all NextGen jurisdictions, regardless of first administration dates, with the information they will need to set the passing score on the new score scale and to accept transferred scores earned on the new exam.
Finally, our Annual Bar Admissions Conference educational program has been finalized. The conference will be in Seattle in early May, not long after this issue goes to print. In this time of seemingly constant flux, our program aims to provide timely and useful information and workshops for justices, bar examiners, and admissions staff to navigate the changing bar admissions and legal education landscape. We have assembled an excellent roster of speakers to address character and fitness topics, alternative admission paths, artificial intelligence, assessment research, lawyer wellness, and legal education.
Inaugural Award
We will also present the inaugural Diane F. Bosse Award for Excellence and Service in Bar Admissions at the conference. (Visit www.ncbex.org/about/bosse-award for information about this award.) No spoiler alert here: we will wait until after the conference to announce the recipient. Our goal is to recognize lawyers who have devoted so much of their volunteer lives helping to admit new generations of lawyers who will serve the public and the profession. It is not glamourous work—some of the nominees had graded bar exams for over 40 years, and the group had about 250 years’ experience collectively. That’s a lot of IRAC! It was a hard decision to select one recipient, as all were deserving leaders, mentors, and innovators.
This annual statistics issue is the culmination of months of work by Claire Guback, Editor, and Joe Fitzgibbon, Editorial Assistant, collaborating with admissions offices to submit and then check and double-check the data. My thanks to all admissions staff who gather this data and accurately report it. And a big thank you to Joe and Claire for collating and presenting it with such clarity. Exam-related data is more important now than ever to better understand performance trends and track candidate volume.
Until the next issue,
Judith A. GundersenContact us to request a pdf file of the original article as it appeared in the print edition.
