ProfessorTommy.Tips

Well, that didn’t take long. Just hours after I posted about the "Final 7” jurisdictions that had yet to decide whether to adopt the NextGen bar exam, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an order adopting the Legacy Uniform Bar Examination beginning in July 2026, with a transition to the NextGen UBE in July 2028. So, yes, my earlier post (" South Carolina Is In, So What About the Final 7 ") aged quickly. But in another sense, it aged pretty well. Wisconsin was one of the juri

South Carolina is officially in. With its announcement yesterday that it will begin administering the NextGen UBE in July 2028, South Carolina becomes the 49th jurisdiction to have already committed to the new exam. That leaves just seven jurisdictions still on the sidelines. And that’s really the story now. This is no longer about whether the NextGen UBE will become the dominant bar exam. It already has. The question now is what these remaining jurisdictions are signaling

As the NextGen UBE gets closer, I'm seeing a very common misunderstanding about the star symbols in the NCBE’s NextGen UBE Content Scope Outline . The NextGen UBE is the NCBE’s redesigned bar exam, created to better measure foundational lawyering skills (reading, analysis, reasoning, writing, and using legal materials) while still testing a defined set of doctrinal concepts. The exam is designed to feel more like the work lawyers actually do, often with a mix of what you know

Yesterday, the National Conference of Bar Examiners released a new document: " NextGen UBE Constructed Response Guide ." It's touted as the "NCBE’s Official Resource for Understanding and Responding to the Written Components of the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination.” The document is attached for your reference. If you're taking the NextGen UBE in July 2026, I highly recommend that you review this new document and the previously released resources found at the end of the documen

If you’re studying for the bar right now, you may have seen this NCBE update: "Effective with the July 2026 bar exam, the following areas will no longer be tested on the MEE: Conflict of Laws, Family Law, Trusts and Estates, and Secured Transactions. From July 2026 through February 2028, both Family Law and Trusts and Estates will be tested regularly through the Multistate Performance Test." That announcement might have you wondering: “Wait … do I still need to learn Family L

For years, the Uniform Bar Examination portability pitch was simple: take the exam in one UBE jurisdiction place, transfer an eligible score to another UBE jurisdiction. The NextGen UBE transition is turning that simple idea into a more complicated planning problem, especially during the July 2026 through February 2028 window when some jurisdictions will be administering the NextGen UBE and others will still be offering the Legacy UBE. Recently, the landscape has started to c

Every once in a while, a bar-exam order drops that makes me stop mid-scroll, blink twice, and say, “Wait! They did what?” That just happened in Washington. Washington will be one of the first jurisdictions to administer the NextGen UBE starting in July 2026, and on December 8 the Washington Supreme Court issued a short, two-page order that quietly made three big moves at once. In its new order, the Washington Supreme Court did three key things: 1️⃣ Set the NextGen UBE pass

For years, bar takers in Uniform Bar Exam jurisdictions have lived and breathed one magic number: 💬 “I just need a 270,” an Ohio examinee declares. 💬 In Missouri, another might quietly ask, “Did you hit 260?” 💬 Over in New York, an examinee might simply note, “Our state’s cut score is 266.” Minimum passing scores in UBE jurisdictions range from 260 to 270. That "cut score" became shorthand for “I passed” in many UBE jurisdictions. With the rollout of the NextGen UBE , th

The National Conference of Bar Examiners' news release yesterday frames the Jan. 8-10, 2026 “Beta Test” of the upcoming NextGen Uniform Bar Exam as the ultimate readiness test—a capstone proving that the July 2026 exam is good to go. For clarity, a beta test, according to Merriam-Webster , is “a field test of the beta version of a product (such as software) especially by testers outside the company developing it that is conducted prior to commercial release.” Software daevel

You’ve might have heard it by now. The viral mashup of Taylor Swift’s “Elizabeth Taylor” and the Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” has taken over social media. It’s a nostalgic, unexpected blend of pop eras that somehow works. And believe it or not, it’s a pretty good preview of what’s coming your way with the NextGen Bar Exam. The Mashup Analogy A mashup works only when two songs—often with very different rhythms, keys, and eras—are artfully combined to sound