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NextGen bar exam subjects: eight foundational concepts, being business associations, civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law and constitutional protections, evidence, real property and torts, plus seven foundational skills. Conflict of laws and secured transactions are gone, and the rule against perpetuities is not tested.
Eight foundational concepts and principles: business associations and relationships, civil procedure, constitutional law, contract law, criminal law and constitutional protections of accused persons, evidence, real property, and torts (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/content-scope).
That is down from the legacy UBE's larger memorised pool, and the reduction is the point rather than a side effect.
One doctrine is named as excluded outright. The rule against perpetuities is explicitly not tested on NextGen (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-07/NCBE%20NextGen%20UBE%20Content%20Scope-Aug%202025.pdf).
Eight foundational conceptsSeven foundational skillsBusiness associations and relationshipsLegal researchCivil procedureLegal writingConstitutional lawIssue spotting and analysisContract lawInvestigation and evaluationCriminal law and constitutional protections of accused personsClient counseling and advisingEvidenceNegotiation and dispute resolutionReal propertyClient relationship and managementTorts
From NCBE's NextGen content scope (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/content-scope). Verified July 27, 2026. A note on this table: NCBE's website skill list and the Content Scope PDF's assessment groups differ slightly on how legal writing and drafting are split, so treat the seven as the published naming rather than a rigid taxonomy.
Seven, and four of them have no analogue on the legacy exam at all.
The familiar three are legal research, legal writing, and issue spotting and analysis. Legal research is the one that changed most, moving from an assumed competence to a directly tested skill through Legal Research Performance Tasks (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/sample-questions).
The four new ones are investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management.
NCBE frames the whole redesign as balancing the skills and knowledge needed in litigation and transactional practice (https://nextgenbarexam.ncbex.org), which is what those four are there to reach.
Two are gone as memorised doctrine with no announced return: conflict of laws, and secured transactions under UCC Article 9 (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/update-nextgen-exam-content-extends-availability).
Two more moved to a resource-provided model rather than disappearing, which is a different thing and is covered in detail on our companion page.
Family law and trusts and estates appear on every exam from July 2026 through February 2028 embedded within skills-focused questions, with the necessary legal resources such as statutes, regulations and case law provided to the examinee (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/content-scope).
The distinction matters for how you study. A dropped subject is time you reclaim. A resource-provided subject is time you redirect from memorisation to reading and applying supplied authority under time pressure.
Subjects do not sit in dedicated sections, which is the structural change that most affects study planning.
Each of the three sections contains about 40 standalone multiple-choice questions, two integrated question sets and one performance task (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/NCBE-NextGen-UBE-Blueprint.pdf), and any of the eight concepts can appear in any of them.
Professional responsibility content appears inside integrated question sets but explicitly not as standalone multiple-choice, and it does not displace the MPRE (https://help.ncbex.org/hc/en-us/articles/39896137942299).
The subject reduction reached the legacy exam first, and NCBE's own MEE page has not caught up.
That page still lists all twelve historical MEE subjects. Effective July 2026, conflict of laws, family law, trusts and estates and secured transactions do not appear on the MEE, though they may still appear on the MPT (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/update-nextgen-exam-content-extends-availability).
So the operative MEE pool for July 2026 through February 2028 is eight subjects, not twelve. If you are sitting the legacy exam and your outline still drills twelve MEE subjects, it is a cycle behind.
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.
Which also means nobody can tell you how the eight concepts actually weighted out in practice. The Blueprint gives you the intended structure; only administered exams give you the realised one, and none had been administered.
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.
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 resource provided subjects and what is the nextgen bar exam.
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.
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.
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.
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 NextGen subjects 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.
Eight foundational concepts: business associations, civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law and constitutional protections of accused persons, evidence, real property and torts.
Seven: legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management.
Conflict of laws and secured transactions are gone as memorised doctrine with no announced return. Family law and trusts and estates moved to a resource-provided model. The rule against perpetuities is not tested.
Inside integrated question sets, yes, but explicitly not as standalone multiple-choice, and it does not replace the MPRE.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026