Inaugural NextGen Scores Reveal Comparable Results to Legacy UBE Exam
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) just released national results from the inaugural July 2026 administration of the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination (UBE), providing the first operational evidence of candidate performance on the new exam.
Across the limited jurisdictions administering the NextGen UBE, the national mean score was 640.6 and the median was 640. The overall pass rate was 72.7 percent, within 4.3 percentage points of every July national pass rate from 2021 through 2025. Unlike the legacy exam, the NextGen UBE produces a single score reflecting performance across the entire exam. The national mean and median reported here therefore reflect performance on the NextGen UBE as a whole, rather than on an individual exam component.
“These results give us an encouraging first look at how the NextGen UBE is performing,” said NCBE President and CEO Judith Gundersen. “NextGen was designed to better reflect the knowledge and skills newly licensed lawyers need today while continuing to give jurisdictions a strong basis for making licensure decisions. These first results are encouraging, but they are just the beginning. We’ll continue to learn from each administration and build on what we know as more jurisdictions and candidates transition to the exam.”
First-time examinees, meaning those who had never previously taken a bar exam in any jurisdiction, passed the NextGen UBE at a rate of 85.2 percent, compared with 41.0 percent for repeat examinees. First-time examinees have historically passed at higher rates than repeat examinees. However, direct comparisons with prior years should be made cautiously. In previous years, an examinee could be counted as a first-time taker if they were taking the bar exam for the first time in a particular jurisdiction, even if they had previously taken it elsewhere. For the July 2026 NextGen UBE, first-time examinees are those who had never previously taken a bar exam in any jurisdiction.
NCBE recognizes that the operational disruptions during the July administration created a difficult and stressful experience for affected examinees. Because of the importance of understanding whether those disruptions may have affected examinee performance, NCBE conducted targeted analyses of score outcomes. Those analyses did not find a consistent pattern showing that examinees who experienced disruptions scored differently from those who did not.
In Missouri, where some examinees experienced delays and an adjusted testing schedule, examinees on the adjusted schedule performed consistently with the broader population.
In Washington, NCBE examined the performance of examinees who were able to complete the July administration. Their performance was consistent with comparable examinees nationally.
“It’s encouraging that our analyses did not find evidence that the disruptions systematically affected examinee performance, but that doesn’t lessen the importance of what we learned from the administration,” said Kara Smith, NCBE Chief Product Officer. “Any disruption has the potential to affect the testing experience, so we’re using what we learned in July to strengthen readiness and reduce operational risk in future administrations.”
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