Update On The New Bar Exam: The Class Of 2026 Is In Luck
Out with the old, in with the new! Eventually.
Major announcement! An end to the aar exam is in sight! The version we are used to, at least.
There will still be a bar exam. Diploma privilege would be preferable, but the new version will have some obvious benefits to the one your mentors and their fore-mentors suffered through. The plan is for the new hotness to be the new standard in three to four years. From Law.com:
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) recently announced that after the NextGen exam launches in July 2026, the July 2027 bar exam will be the last administration of the current NCBE bar exam—also known as the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE)—which includes the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) and Multistate Performance Test (MPT), according to NCBE’s announcement.
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This new-and-improved test will drop four of the test areas the old one had: Family Law, Conflict of Laws, Trusts and Estates, and Secured Transactions. For anyone prevented from doing M&A because their Family Law knowledge wasn’t up to par, this is your vindication. For the weak-bladdered among us, the NextGen exam will take a whopping three fewer hours overall.
Will there still be problems with the exam? You betcha, and you can count on us to share the horror stories that we get from tips@abovethelaw.com.
Current Bar Exam Will Sunset After July 2027 Administration [Law.com]
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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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