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Nevada bar exam changes make it the only jurisdiction to affirmatively decline NextGen. July 2026 was the last traditional Nevada bar exam ever. From February 2027 licensure runs through the MPRE, a Foundational Law Exam, a Lawyering Performance Exam and a Supervised Practice Program.
No. Nevada is the only US jurisdiction to affirmatively decline it, and its own page says so in those words: Nevada has not adopted the NextGen Bar Exam (https://nvbar.org/nvplan/).
Three other jurisdictions have made no announcement, which is not the same thing. Arkansas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico are labelled by NCBE as 'No Announcement Regarding NextGen UBE' (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/nextgen-ube-scores-score-portability/nextgen-ube-decisions-jurisdiction).
Nevada is a decision. The other three are silence.
The Nevada Comprehensive Licensing Examination, a four-component licensure regime replacing the traditional bar exam entirely (https://nvbar.org/nvplan/).
The four components are the MPRE, a Foundational Law Exam, a Lawyering Performance Exam, and a Supervised Practice Program.
It was ordered in ADKT 0594 on May 23, 2025, with rules effective January 19, 2026, and licensure under the plan begins February 2027.
The first Foundational Law Exam was already administered on May 28 and 29, 2026. The first Lawyering Performance Exam is January 19, 2027.
ComponentStatus as publishedMPREExisting NCBE exam, retainedFoundational Law ExamFirst administered May 28 and 29, 2026Lawyering Performance ExamFirst administration January 19, 2027Supervised Practice ProgramPart of the four-component regimeLicensure under the plan beginsFebruary 2027Authorising orderADKT 0594, May 23, 2025; rules effective January 19, 2026
From the State Bar of Nevada's own Nevada Plan page (https://nvbar.org/nvplan/) and its bar exam dates page (https://nvbar.org/licensing-compliance/admissions/bar-exam/dates-locations/). Verified July 27, 2026.
It already happened. Nevada's July 2026 administration, July 28 to 30, was the last administration of the traditional Nevada bar exam ever (https://nvbar.org/licensing-compliance/admissions/bar-exam/dates-locations/).
Nevada ran three calendar days rather than two, which was already unusual: February 24 to 26 and July 28 to 30, 2026.
There is no transitional traditional sitting. Anyone who did not sit in July 2026 goes through the Nevada Plan.
That makes Nevada the sharpest cliff edge in the country. Every other jurisdiction has at least one more traditional administration; Nevada does not.
Worth knowing because it removes the obvious workaround.
Nevada is one of exactly seven jurisdictions that permit no admission on motion at all, alongside California, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-14/).
It does offer registered in-house counsel status at $1,000 and military-spouse licensure (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-16/), which is the narrow route in for lawyers already licensed elsewhere.
A verification caveat we will not hide: Nevada's non-permitting status rests on NCBE's chart because nvbar.org returned errors on every admissions sub-path. Treat it as not independently confirmed against Nevada's own rule text.
Passing scores and score scales for the Foundational Law Exam and the Lawyering Performance Exam were not published by the State Bar of Nevada at verification.
Neither were the 2027 calendar dates for either exam beyond the January 19, 2027 first Lawyering Performance Exam.
Nor was there any published guidance on whether a Nevada Plan licence interacts with score portability elsewhere, which is the question most out-of-state readers will have. For all of these the answer is not yet published rather than an estimate.
It cannot tell you what your own board will do. Jurisdictions set their own dates, fees, cut scores, deadlines and admission rules, and NCBE compiles those decisions rather than making them.
It cannot substitute for reading your jurisdiction's rule text. Compilation charts are an index into the rules, not the rules, and every material decision should be checked against the authority itself.
It cannot tell you whether the Nevada Plan is a better or worse route than an exam, because the regime has produced no licensed lawyers yet.
This page is one spoke of a cluster. The hub is our NextGen bar exam pillar, which carries the whole transition in one place and links every spoke including this one.
The two most closely related pages here are nextgen bar exam states and bar exam alternatives.
Everything across the cluster is drawn from the same verified fact set and carries the same verified-as-of date, so the numbers agree with each other by construction rather than by coincidence.
Every fact here was read on NCBE's own pages or the jurisdiction's own board or supreme court pages on July 27, 2026. No prep company, no aggregator, no forum and no news summary was used as a source for anything.
Where a jurisdiction's own site was unreachable, robots-blocked or JavaScript-gated, we say the fact rests on NCBE alone rather than presenting it as confirmed. That happened more often than you would expect and it is named on the page each time.
Where two official sources disagree, we publish the conflict and name which one we treat as operational. We do not pick quietly and we do not average them.
Where nothing is published, the page says not yet published by the board. It never says a number we worked out ourselves, because an estimate that looks like a disclosure is worse than a gap.
The first is adoption. Supreme courts issue orders on their own schedule and NCBE's compilation pages lag them, which is exactly what happened with California in July 2026.
The second is the calendar. Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or 2027 fees at verification, and several were serving prior-cycle pages without saying so.
The third is cut scores. NCBE states on its own page that jurisdictions are currently evaluating its recommended NextGen range (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores), so that list grows month by month.
None of those three settles before autumn. Treat September as the re-check point for anything on this page that carries a date or a number.
Start at NCBE's jurisdiction index (https://www.ncbex.org/jurisdictions) to find the name of your admitting authority, which is often not the state bar association and is sometimes a board sitting under the supreme court.
Then go to that authority's own site and look for a dated page. A page with no cycle label is the warning sign, not the exception; several boards serve prior-cycle information with no year on it anywhere.
Cross-check the deadlines page against the program page, because they disagree more often than they should. We found boards contradicting themselves on dates in the same week.
If the two disagree and you cannot tell which is current, email the board and keep the reply. A dated email from the board is better evidence than any table, including this one.
One framing point that governs this whole page. The first NextGen administration was July 28 and 29, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen), so at the time of writing no NextGen exam had been sat anywhere in the world and no results existed. There is no NextGen pass rate, no score distribution, no repeater data and no retrospective on how it went, and anyone offering you one is inventing it.
That matters on this page specifically, because the transition is the reason any of it is moving. Structure, dates and published policy are reportable now; outcomes are not.
NCBE has not published a NextGen mean or standard deviation either. The figures are absent from the Guidance Brief, the Examinees' Guide, the Blueprint and every scoring page (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf), which is worth knowing before you read anyone's confident claim about difficulty.
Open your own jurisdiction's board page and confirm every date and number on this page against it.
Where this page says not yet published, check again in September, which is when most boards refresh.
If your plan turns on a figure here, get it from the board in writing rather than from any table.
Everything on this page about Nevada's licensure changes was read on the source pages listed inline on July 27, 2026, and the date is on the page rather than buried in a footer because this material moves faster than anything else we publish.
Three separate clocks are running against it. Supreme courts issue adoption orders and NCBE's own pages lag them.
Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or fees. NextGen passing scores are being set jurisdiction by jurisdiction right now, and NCBE says so on its own page (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores).
Re-check your own jurisdiction's board before you rely on any date or number here, including ours. A figure quoted anywhere without a cycle label and a date attached is unverified by definition.
No. Nevada is the only jurisdiction to affirmatively decline it. Arkansas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico have made no announcement, which is silence rather than a decision.
The Nevada Comprehensive Licensing Examination: the MPRE, a Foundational Law Exam, a Lawyering Performance Exam and a Supervised Practice Program. Ordered May 23, 2025, licensure begins February 2027.
July 28 to 30, 2026, which has already passed. There is no transitional traditional sitting, so everyone after that goes through the Nevada Plan.
No. Nevada is one of seven jurisdictions permitting no admission on motion. It offers registered in-house counsel status and military-spouse licensure.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026