UConn Law graduates sat down to a brand-new bar exam this week, after months – or maybe years, depending on how they look at it – of preparation. Connecticut was one of the 10 jurisdictions to debut the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination with the July 2026 test.
This new exam, developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), is intended to better reflect the practice of law. The NextGen exam is designed to test more of the skills and knowledge needed in litigation and transactional legal practice, incorporating a broad range of foundational lawyering skills.
According to the NCBE, the exam reflects many of the key changes occurring in legal education, including those in clinical legal education programs, alternative dispute resolution programs, and legal writing and analysis programs. That bodes well for UConn Law alumni.
“I believe our robust experiential education program, innovative first-year Legal Practice program and rigorous upper-level curriculum will position our students well for success on the Next Gen Bar,” Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Molly Land says.
In the fall of 2024, UConn Law students were among those who took a prototype version of the exam, which allowed the school to gather feedback about students’ experience of the new exam and whether they felt their legal education prepared them for the new format. Participants shared that the exam drew heavily on skills they had gained during the real-world learning opportunities that UConn Law offered.
To reflect the practice of law, the NextGen exam relies less on memorization, because in real life lawyers research in real time. It also features integrated practice-based question sets rather than dividing content into discrete subjects, because areas of law often overlap in practice. It also features fewer subjects, which allows students to prepare better.
Preparing for the NextGen bar has been a school-wide priority for the last several years. The faculty explored a range of curricular innovations and Land brought bar company AccessLex on board to offer all graduating students a pre-bar exam course to jumpstart their preparation. The school is also participating in a longitudinal study run by researchers at the University of Cincinnati focused on identifying predicators of success on the new exam and how schools can best support examinees.
“I don’t wish to retake the bar, but I wish this rolled out a couple of years ago,” UConn Law bar success coach Angelica Matos Jennings ’22. “My understanding about this bar is that it is a lot more approachable, testing students more on skills they learned and less on how many doctrines can you memorize.”
Jennings joined UConn Law this year to help students prepare for the bar exam, while Professor Mary Beattie stepped back from bar preparation to focus on academic support. Jennings assisted students with both exams, the NextGen, and legacy Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) – since graduates may still take the traditional bar exam in other states and transfer their UBE Score for admission to the Connecticut bar.
Jennings created a HuskyCT site for graduating students with direct links to application materials for UConn Law’s frequently tested jurisdictions, practice questions and essays, and content scope linked on NCBE’s site. She created a similar site for faculty, so they’d have access and exposure to the testing format their students would see. Additionally, she taught a winter course, Applied Analytical Writing – a course pioneered by Beattie – in which students gained exposure and practice in the analytical reading and writing necessary to excel on the exam, and provided advice and testing guidance and essay review through the date of the exam.
Jennings helped students conceptually understand the new integrated questions set structure: what questions are asking, how to move through them, and how to avoid the trap of treating each component in isolation. Professor Susie Schmeiser joined her in offering students direct feedback on their practice bar exam essays.
The Thomas J. Meskill Law Library has also made efforts to educate students about the legal research portions of the NextGen exam. Research librarians Anne Rajotte, Tanya Johnson, and Adam Mackie all addressed the exam in their Advanced Legal Research (ALR) classes. Johnson also ran sessions in the new library lab to prepare for the research portion of the exam.
“Overall, a lot of what I’m doing is trying to calm students down and make them less afraid of at least this portion of the bar exam,” Johnson says. “For the lab sessions and for ALR, I start by talking about what the exam will be like, the structure of the exam, what types of questions there are, etc., and then I talk in more detail about the research questions.”
Over the summer, alumni and full-time and adjunct faculty members also contributed $1500 to distribute as prizes to students studying for the bar, incentivizing various milestones in their preparation.
While there are challenges in being the first to officially take the new exam, the whole UConn Law community continues to come together to prepare students and graduates for whichever bar exam they choose to take.
