State Bar & Bar Associations
Feb. 18, 2026
After last year's bar exam disaster, state must adopt NextGen
After the February 2025 bar exam disaster, California should adopt the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam for July 2028 and restore confidence in the licensing process.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin's most recent book is "Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism." He is also the author of "Closing the Courthouse," (Yale University Press 2017).
The failure of the California State Bar (Bar) to adopt the NextGen Bar exam and the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) truly makes no sense. Forty-one states have already adopted it, and although virtually every law school dean in the state has urged the same course, the Bar has still refused to act. The California Supreme Court should use its authority to adopt it.
In summer 2024, the Bar decided to stop using the National Conference of Bar Examiners' Multistate Bar Exam and signed a con...
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