Exam Content

From July 2026 to February 2028, the NextGen UBE will test the following Foundational Concepts and Principles and Foundational Lawyering Skills:

• Foundational Concepts and Principles: business associations, civil procedure, constitutional law, contract law, criminal law, evidence, real property, torts
• 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

Other areas of legal knowledge will also appear on the NextGen UBE to provide the context for testing one or more foundational lawyering skills, but examinees are not expected or required to develop a base of knowledge in those areas. For those questions, examinees will be provided with the necessary legal resources (e.g. statutes, regulations, and case law) to demonstrate the skills being tested. From July 2026 through February 2028, family law and trusts and estates will appear in these skills-focused questions on every exam. 

For further information on what will be tested on the NextGen UBE, visit the NextGen UBE Content Scope Outlines.

The content scope outlines document the breadth of material to be covered in the areas of legal knowledge and categories of practical skills and abilities that will be tested on the NextGen UBE. These outlines designate not only the exam topics, but also the depth at which each topic will be tested.

Question Types 

The NextGen UBE features three broad categories of question types:

Multiple-Choice Questions: Approximately 40% of the exam time will be devoted to standalone multiple-choice questions with between four and six answer options and one or more correct answers. Initially, many of these questions will closely resemble Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) questions; this will ensure stability between scores for the current and NextGen bar exams. In future administrations, the variety of multiple-choice question types will increase. Note that some multiple-choice questions may also appear in the integrated question sets and longer writing tasks, which are described below. Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

Integrated Question Sets: Just over a quarter of the exam time will be devoted to integrated question sets. Each of these sets is based on a common fact scenario and may include some legal resources (e.g., excerpts of statutes or judicial opinions) and/or supplemental documents (e.g., a police report or excerpt from a deposition) and include a mixture of multiple-choice, medium-answer, and short-answer questions. In addition to testing doctrinal law, some integrated question sets will be focused on drafting or editing a legal document; other sets will be focused on counseling and/or dispute resolution. Sample Integrated Question Sets

Performance Tasks: Approximately a third of the exam time will be devoted to performance tasks. These tasks, like current Multistate Performance Test (MPT) questions, will require examinees to demonstrate their ability to use fundamental lawyering skills in realistic situations, completing tasks that a beginning lawyer should be able to accomplish. These tasks may feature areas of doctrinal law, with accompanying legal resources, not included in the Foundational Concepts and Principles. These areas of doctrinal law might include, for example, Trusts and Estates, Intellectual Property, or Administrative Law. One of the longer performance tasks will include several multiple-choice questions and short constructed response questions focused on research skills, followed by a longer writing assignment. Sample Performance Tasks

Free sample questions are available at the link below.