July 30 (Reuters) - With exactly one year to go before U.S. law grads will begin taking a new version of the national bar exam, some law school faculty are calling to push back the launch in light of the technological meltdown that plagued California's revamped bar exam in February.
The organization developing the new test told Reuters it is on track and that any delay is unnecessary for the rollout -- the first major redesign of the national lawyer licensing test in 25 years.
Delaying the NextGen UBE, which stands for Uniform Bar Exam, until July 2027 would give the National Conference of Bar Examiners more time to test the exam technology, said Nachman Gutowski, president of the Association of Academic Support Professionals, which represents law school bar prep faculty.
"It's prudent to take the time to consider how to properly roll this out, dot all the I's and cross all the T's, especially now that [the National Conference] is on notice from the horrendous rollout from California," Gutowski said.
National Conference President Judith Gundersen said those concerns are misplaced. She said the organization is developing and evaluating test content, releasing study materials, fine-tuning the exam's online platform, and testing all of those elements on schedule.
"All systems, for us, are go," Gundersen said. "We are confident that we are going to be ready for July 2026."
DITCHING PAPER TESTS
The NextGen UBE differs from the current exam by emphasizing practical legal skills over memorization of laws. At nine hours, it's shorter than the current 12-hour exam being administered nationwide this week. It will also be the first national bar exam to forgo paper test booklets, aside from during the pandemic.
California broke with the national bar exam in February with a hybrid online and in-person exam, but test takers reported a slew of problems ranging from software crashes to interruptions from proctors.
Comparisons with the California test are unfair because the NextGen UBE has been in the works since 2018, Gundersen said. California, by contrast, rolled out its new bar exam in less than a year.
Some law professors are concerned by a "last minute" switch of online testing platforms for the new bar exam, said Ashley London, director of bar studies at Duquesne University School of Law. The National Conference in January 2024 selected Surpass Assessment as its testing platform provider but switched to Internet Testing Systems in March.
"We have a history of malfunctioning bar exam software, plus what happened in California, and now we have another switch to a new online platform with little information as to why that switch was made," London said.
Gundersen said that some Mac users experienced problems during an October prototype test of the NextGen UBE on the Surpass platform and that the exam interface was not as intuitive as the National Conference wanted. Surpass did not respond to a request for comment.
The National Conference is planning to beta test the new exam in January with 1,500 people, Gundersen added.
So far, 45 states and territories have announced plans to transition to the NextGen UBE between July 2026 and July 2028, when the National Conference will stop offering the current bar exam. California and Nevada have said they won't use the new test, while a handful of states have yet to announce any decision.
Ten jurisdictions will use the NextGen UBE in July 2026, including Connecticut, Maryland, and Missouri. Another 13 will transition to the new exam in July 2027, while 21 -- including New York, Texas and Florida -- are waiting until February or July 2028.
Gundersen said the National Conference is planning to release a number of resources in early August, final details on what will be tested and an examinee guide with logistical information. It also plans to release online NextGen UBE study materials that will use the actual testing platform in the coming weeks, though law schools and examinees will have to pay for access.
Those resources should have been released a year or more ago, Gutowski said.
"We are going to be learning it as we're teaching it," he said. "It's far from ideal."