The NextGen bar exam runs 9 hours over 1.5 days and is built from three question components: 120 standalone multiple-choice questions, six integrated question sets and three performance tasks.
NCBE scores it as a single number on a 500–750 scale and, for administrations from July 2026 through February 2028, tests eight foundational subjects and seven lawyering skills.
Here is the full format — question types, subjects, skills, timing and where sample questions stand.
How is the NextGen bar exam structured?
The NextGen UBE is administered over one and a half days: two 3-hour sessions on day one and one 3-hour session on day two, for 9 hours of testing in total.
Jurisdictions that add a local component may extend day two.
Each administration falls on the Tuesday and the last Wednesday of February or July.
NCBE’s published upcoming dates are February 23–24, 2027; July 27–28, 2027; and February 22–23, 2028.
You take the exam on your own laptop at an in-person, proctored testing site, using NCBE’s secure testing browser — the NextGen UBE is not given at commercial test centers.
The exam was first administered in July 2026 in ten jurisdictions, among them Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon and Washington.
The rest of the map follows in waves: twelve jurisdictions in July 2027, four in February 2028, and 25 in July 2028 — the wave that includes California, Florida, New York and Texas — with Mississippi adopted but its date still to be determined.
As of October 2026, only Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada and Puerto Rico show no NextGen adoption on NCBE’s map.
NCBE’s adoption table — last updated September 25, 2026 — lists each jurisdiction’s first administration, passing score, date accepting transfers and minimum transferred score, and our NextGen guide walks through the full rollout jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
Scoring is one number on a 500–750 scale, with no separate multiple-choice and written component scores.
NCBE cautions that legacy UBE scores on the 400 scale and NextGen scores on the 500–750 scale should not be compared directly — they are different scales.
July 2026: one jurisdiction needed a make-up
NextGen bar exam question types
Every NextGen UBE is built from the same three components.
There are 120 standalone multiple-choice questions, 40 per section — each asking you to select one answer from four options, or two answers from six.
Alongside them are six integrated question sets, two per section, and three performance tasks, one per section.
The three components count unequally toward your score: standalone multiple-choice questions make up 49%, integrated question sets 21%, and performance tasks 30%.
| Component | How many | Share of the score |
|---|---|---|
| Standalone multiple-choice questions | 120 (40 per section) | 49% |
| Integrated question sets | 6 (two per section) | 21% |
| Performance tasks | 3 (one per section) | 30% |
Pacing is the practical takeaway from that mix.
NCBE’s expected benchmarks are about 1.8 minutes per standalone multiple-choice question, 24 minutes per integrated question set, and 60 minutes per performance task — the guide NCBE publishes for examinees spells each out so you can rehearse against them.
NextGen bar exam subjects: the foundational concepts
For administrations from July 2026 through February 2028, NCBE scopes the exam to eight foundational subjects:
- Business associations and relationships
- Civil procedure
- Constitutional law
- Contract law
- Criminal law and constitutional protections of accused persons
- Evidence
- Real property
- Torts
One addition is already scheduled: family law becomes a tested foundational subject starting with the July 2028 NextGen UBE.
Until then, family law and trusts and estates appear only in skills questions, with the legal resources provided.
Three areas are not on the foundational list at all: Conflict of Laws, Secured Transactions and Trusts & Estates.
NCBE’s content scope says examinees are not expected or required to develop a base of knowledge in those areas.
How that list lines up with the legacy exam’s tested content is a question of its own — our guide to bar exam subjects covers what each exam puts in scope.
The seven lawyering skills tested
Alongside the eight subjects, the NextGen tests seven foundational lawyering skills:
- Legal research
- Legal writing
- Issue spotting and analysis
- Investigation and evaluation
- Client counseling and advising
- Negotiation and dispute resolution
- Client relationship and management
The skills layer changes what “knowing the material” means on this exam.
Family law and trusts and estates, for example, appear only in skills questions — and those questions come with the legal resources provided.
For study purposes, that is the signal to read: working with supplied materials is part of the tested format, not a detour from it.
NextGen bar exam sample questions
If you are hunting for official NextGen bar exam sample questions, here is the honest state of play.
NCBE’s NextGen UBE Examinee Guide documents the exam’s construction — the question counts, the select-one-of-four and select-two-of-six answer formats and the pacing shown above — but NCBE is not releasing the constructed-response questions from the July 2026 administration, so the first sitting’s written questions are not available to study from.
What you can work from today is the documented format itself: 120 standalone multiple-choice questions in the two answer formats above, six integrated question sets and three performance tasks (NCBE’s pacing benchmark is 60 minutes each), tested across eight subjects and seven skills through the February 2028 administration.
For current official sample and practice materials, check NCBE’s NextGen pages at ncbex.org — NCBE writes the exam, and it is the authority for what has and has not been released.
Career information, not legal advice. The NextGen UBE format, dates and fees are set by NCBE, and admission requirements by each jurisdiction — confirm both with NCBE and the bar admission authority where you plan to sit.
Confirm the exam details where you will sit