What Do You Need to Memorize for the NextGen Bar Exam?

Hello. Welcome to JD Advising's NextGen Bar Exam webinar. My name is Lisa Klein. I am the director of product development at JD Advising. I'm happy to be with you today to talk about the NextGen UBE. The handout for this webinar is in the chat. Feel free to download the handout and follow along during the webinar. Additionally, I'll be sharing the handout on my screen during the webinar presentation. We have a Q& A function available for you to ask questions. Our panelists will respond to your questions in the Q& A during the presentation. Additionally, the panelists will reserve some questions for me to answer out loud after the presentation portion of the webinar is complete. Please be patient in waiting for the panelists to answer as there are many more of you than there are of us. Also, please restrict your questions to the scope of the NextGen Bar Exam and the content of this webinar. All right, I'm going to start sharing my screen. Okay. Hopefully you can see this uh the PDF here. So, this webinar will answer the question, what do I need to memorize for the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam? To learn more about the NextGen UBE, I encourage you to check out JD Advising's free NextGen Resources course as well as JD Advising's other NextGen resources. So, to answer the question, what do I need to memorize for the NextGen UBE? You first need to understand something about the scope of the next gen UBE. As it says in the handout, the scope of the next gen UBE is complex and takes some time to understand. However, taking the time to understand the scope of this exam is time well spent as it will help you to navigate all parts of the exam. The scope of the next gen UBE is divided into two major categories. Foundational concepts and principles and foundational skills and tasks. Starting with foundational concepts and principles, these are what we would commonly refer to as subjects. So, what subjects are tested on the next gen UBE? From July 2026 to February 2028, the following subjects will be tested on the next gen UBE. Business associations and relationships, civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law and constitutional protections of accused persons, evidence, real property, and torts. Looking now at the foundational skills and tasks, these are divided into four groups. Group A, which includes issue spotting and analysis and investigation and analysis, um Group B, which includes client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management, Group C, which includes legal research, and Group D, which includes legal writing and drafting. Returning now to the foundational concepts and principles, — [clears throat] — the topics within each subject are divided into two groups. Topics with a star symbol and topics without a star symbol. This means that in the NCBE NextGen scope outline, which I will show you an excerpt from in just a moment, some of the topics have stars next to them and some do not. So, what is the significance of these stars? In the handout, I have provided you with the NCBE's explanation of what these stars mean, which is in the box with the blue lettering at the top and the light blue background. Below the NCBE's explanation, I have provided you with my simplified interpretation of the NCBE's explanation. Looking first at the NCBE's explanation, it says, "Within this outline, meaning the scope outline for the NextGen UBE, there are two types of topics.

Topics with a star symbol. Topics followed by a star symbol require an examinee to rely solely on recalled knowledge and understanding of the topic. They will be tested without provision of legal resources. Topics without a star symbol. symbol may be tested with or without provision of legal resources. When these topics are tested without legal resources, the examinee is expected to rely on recalled knowledge and understanding that will enable the examinee to demonstrate recognition that the topic is at issue in the fact scenario. Now, that's a lot to digest. So, I'm going to now go through my interpretation of the NCBE's explanation and try to explain what this all means. So, starting with the starred topics. Starred topics, like it says in the blue box, require the examinee to have the knowledge of the topic that allows the examinee to answer the question, and it requires a legal analysis to arrive at a legal conclusion without the question providing any law. Basically, this means that in order to accurately answer a question on a starred topic, you need to have the relevant law memorized. Non-starred topics are tested differently. Non-starred topics can be tested in two ways. The first way involves the question providing the law or a legal resource necessary to answer the question. The second way requires the examinee to identify that a topic is being tested in the question, but does not require the examinee to perform a legal analysis or arrive at a legal conclusion. This means that questions testing non-starred topics will either have the law provided to you, or if the law is not provided to you, the question on the non-starred topic will require you only to issue spot the topic or topics being tested. Now that we have a basic understanding of the scope of the next gen UBE, the second thing you need to understand are the types of questions that appear on the next gen UBE. The next gen UBE has three basic types of questions. Multiple-choice questions, integrated question sets, and performance tasks. Focusing on multiple-choice questions, some next gen multiple- uh Excuse me. Multiple-choice questions require the examinee to perform a legal analysis, while others require the examinee only to recognize what topic or topics are at issue. For example, let's take a look at a next gen multiple-choice question that requires the examinee to perform a legal analysis. A defendant is being prosecuted for conspiracy to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute. At trial, the government seeks to have its agent testify to a conversation that he overheard between the defendant and a co-conspirator regarding the incoming shipment of a large quantity of methamphetamine. That conversation was also audio taped, though critical portions of it are inaudible. The defendant objects to the testimony of the agent on the ground that it is not the best evidence of the conversation. Is the testimony of the agent admissible? Select one. Answer choice A says no, because the testimony of the agent is not the best evidence of the conversation. Answer choice B says no, because the testimony of the agent recounts hearsay not within any exception. C, yes, because the best evidence rule does not require proof of the conversation through the audio tape. And answer choice D says yes, because the audio tape is partially inaudible.

So, the correct answer is C. And what I want you to notice about this question is not whether or not you got the answer correct or not, but that it requires the examinee to have the law concerning non-documentary evidence memorized. It also requires the examinee to come to a legal conclusion. That is, is the testimony of the agent admissible? As I hope you can see, this is not an issue spotting question. In that the question requires the examinee to do more than to just recognize that the best evidence rule regarding non-documentary evidence is at issue here. The examinee must recognize that rule is at issue, but they must also know the rule, apply the rule to the facts, and arrive at a legal conclusion. Now, let's take a look at an example of a next gen multiple-choice question that requires issue spotting only. Your client owns a carpet cleaning company. The company recently contracted with a customer to clean the carpets throughout the customer's 10-story building for $15,000 with payment due in 30 days. Before payment was due, the customer sent your client a check for $12,000 along with a note specifying that several of the carpets still had stains and included pictures of the stained carpets. The customer's note also said that if your client cashes the check, the remainder of the customer's debt will be discharged. Your client now seeks your advice as to whether the company can cash the check without relinquishing its right to recover the remainder of the customer's debt. Which of the following search terms would be most likely to produce resources that will answer the client's question? Select one. Answer choice A says accord and satisfaction. Answer choice B says consideration. Answer choice C says novation. And answer choice D says offer and acceptance. The correct answer here is A. But what I want you to notice about this question is that unlike the previous question, it does not require the examinee to perform a legal analysis or come to a legal conclusion. Instead, this question merely requires the examinee to know enough about these topics to recognize whether or not it is they are an issue in this fact pattern. There is no need for the examinee to determine whether the company can cash the check without relinquishing its right to recover the remainder of the customer's debt. Note that integrated question sets include multiple choice questions, short answer questions, and medium answer questions. Some of these, like our standalone multiple choice questions on the next gen UBE require the examinee to complete a legal analysis, whereas others require the examinee only to spot the issue being tested. So now, returning to our question of what do I need to memorize for the next gen UBE, the third thing to understand is that it depends on what topic is being tested. Because starred topics usually require the examinee to answer the question using law they have memorized, it is clearly important to memorize starred topics. But do you need to memorize non-starred topics? This is a tricky question to answer, as there is not a simple one-sentence answer. Recall that I said earlier that non-starred topics are tested in two ways on the next gen UBE. First, they can be tested with the provision of legal resources. If the question testing the non-starred topic provides legal resources on that topic, then you don't need to have the law on that topic memorized to answer the question, because the question gives you the relevant law. Although, it may help you to feel more confident in answering this question on this topic if you have had at least some

exposure to the topic. Additionally, even if the question provides you with a legal resource, remember that you still need to know how to read the legal research and apply it to the law that it contains to the facts in the fact pattern. Second, as I mentioned previously, non-starred topics can be tested in issue spotting questions. So, how much law do you need to have memorized to answer an issue spotting question correctly? While this is a challenging question to answer, I think the answer comes from the amount of detail you need to know to be able to answer an issue spotting question correctly. Unlike a question where you need to perform a legal analysis, you are less likely to need to have subtle nuances, including certain exceptions, memorized to properly answer and accurately answer an issue spotting question. Note that I said less likely. I did not say that you can completely ignore the nuances and of a rule or a topic. And does this mean that you do not need to memorize any law for non-starred topics? No, this absolutely does not mean that. Instead, it means that you definitely need to memorize certain things about these topics in order to be able to recognize them and know that they apply. And these things are include that um that you would need to memorize um include, but are not limited to, the elements and again, when the topic applies. This also means that you need to know enough about the topic being tested to not get it confused with other similar topics. As issue spotting questions may include incorrect answer choices that are similar to one another and are similar to the correct answer choice. For example, the issue spotting question we looked together looked at together included four topics related to contracts. Two that relate to contract formation and performance obligations. The correct answer is accord and satisfaction, which students sometimes confuse with novation. So, it is not an accident that these two answer choices appear in this question. So, how can you navigate these starred and non-starred topics when preparing for the next gen UBE? Well, I can tell you, as the director of product development, we at JD Advising have thought long and carefully about how to help you easily determine which topics are starred and which are not starred when we created our next gen UBE preparation materials. Starting with outlines, every JD Advising next gen subject outline contains at the beginning of the outline the information you see here in the this gold box, which mirrors the language used in the NCBE next gen scope outline in explaining the difference between starred and non-starred topics. Below that, I have included an excerpt of the next the NCBE next gen UBE scope outline for the exceptions to the rule against hearsay. So, you can see that some of the topics have a star next to them, such as present sense impression, excited utterance, statement of then existing mental, emotional, and physical condition. You can also see that some of these topics do not have stars next to them, such as statement made for medical diagnosis or treatment, and statement in a learned treatise, periodical, or pamphlet. So, how does JD Advising present starred and non-starred topics in their outlines, so that students don't have to keep running back to the NCBE's scope outline to see what topics are starred and which are not? When creating our NextGen UBE outlines, we quickly realized that it was going to be too confusing to students to put little stars next to every sentence in every rule of every topic that was starred.

starred. So, instead, we decided to place starred topics in a bordered gray box to make it easier for students to see, at a glance, which topics are starred and which are not. For example, you can see in this excerpt in the handout from the JD Advising NextGen UBE Evidence Outline, that the hearsay exception statement of a then existing mental, emotional, or physical condition is in a gray box. This is because this is a starred topic on the NCBE NextGen scope outline, like we just saw. But, just below that, the hearsay exception statement made for medical diagnosis or treatment is not in a gray box, because this is not a starred topic in the NCBE NextGen scope outline. We have taken a similar approach with our NextGen UBE One-Sheets. If you are not familiar with JD Advising's One Sheets, these are one of our most popular resources and we have adapted them for the Next Gen UBE. Here, to indicate starred topics, we have used yellow highlighting and light yellow shading to indicate starred topics. While topics that do not have the yellow highlighting or yellow shading are non-starred topics. This concludes the presentation portion of JD Advising's Next Gen UBE webinar. Before I answer the questions that have been selected for me to answer out loud, I want to introduce Tressa, one of our account executives. — Thank you so much, Lisa. Hi, everyone. First of all, I'd like to thank you guys for taking the time out of your day to be here. I'm currently in Michigan and we're having a beautiful weather day, which is very rare for us. So, for those that are in the same situation being here instead of the sunshine, we really appreciate you being here. Um I also want to take a moment to say how amazing Lisa is. She has been working so hard to ensure that JD Advising students are going to have all the right materials to succeed in this Next Gen Bar Exam and hopefully you got a lot out of this today. Um but if you want to chat more about our course or whether tutoring should be a part of your prep, um I'd love to chat with you. I'm going to drop my calendar link in the chat. You can just book a call. It's short, free. We just kind of chat and see um what we could use what materials you could use to help you success succeed in this exam. So, have a good day, everybody. Thanks so much for being here. — Thank you so much, Tressa. Okay. So, now I'm going to move to a couple of questions that our awesome panelists have tagged for me to answer out loud. And this one says, "Does starred topics mean the essay type question as in the regular bar? " So, the short answer to that is no. And I assume we're talking about the regular bar, current uniform bar exam. Um these are not There are no essay questions in terms of MEE type questions on the next gen bar exam. There are essays in terms of performance tasks, but those are not testing starred or non-starred topics because they test only substantive law for which the question provides the law. So, a starred topic really can show up in any type of question, any type of multiple choice question, it can show up any type of integrated question set. The issue with a starred topic is that you are expected to have the information memorized. So, this question that you brought up really speaks to the complexity of this exam because we have new types of questions. We have multiple choice questions, but some of them are issue spotting questions. Some of them have four answer choices, six answer choices. And then we have integrated question sets, which is an entirely new type of question. And then layered on top of that, we have these different types of topics and how they're tested within the question. So, I hope that answers your question. If it does not, please feel to follow feel free to follow up with this question. I'll be happy to answer it live as well. The next question says, "I have materials of JD advising from a previous attempt. Can I still use it or do I need new ones? " If you're talking about preparing for the next gen bar exam, I highly recommend you get new ones for several reasons. First of all, there are some subjects that are not tested at all on the um the NextGen bar exam. Most of these are

going away in the NextGen UBE anyway: conflict of laws, family law, secured transactions, decedents estates, and trust and future interest. But, more than that, there is more information in our outlines that is different because one thing that I didn't get to in this whole conversation about the scope is that the type of law or the scope of law that is tested on the NextGen UBE is different from the current UBE. So, I think of this is kind of like a Venn diagram. So, if you have the content of all the topics that are tested on the UBE are over here, and then you have those that are tested on the NextGen bar exam, there is some overlap. But, there are topics on the NextGen or the current, excuse me, what they're calling the legacy UBE that are not tested on the NextGen UBE. And vice versa. There are topics that are on the NextGen UBE that are not tested on the legacy or current UBE. So, if you are using the current UBE outlines, you may be studying material that is not tested on the NextGen UBE and you will be missing information that is tested on the NextGen UBE. The other thing to keep in mind is that we don't have gray boxes in the UBE outlines because there's no need for them. There are no distinctions between start and non-start topics on the current UBE. So, that's another reason that I highly recommend that you um access our new NextGen UBE outlines. Okay. Um I see there's a question about whether there's a separate bar prep for NextGen or UBE or we're offering only UBE? We are offering both. So, beginning for July 2026, we have bar prep courses for UBE, just like we have always had, and we have a next gen UBE course. The next gen UBE course is an on-demand course. So, if you are familiar with our offerings for the current UBE, you know that we have an on-demand course, we have a repeat taker course, and we have a live premium course. So, we don't need a repeat taker course for the next gen uh UBE right now because no one has taken it before. That'll probably be coming. And currently, we do not have a live option for July, but that will be coming in um in uh administrations that are coming up as more jurisdictions administer the next gen UBE. Um we're uh able to stay here a little bit longer to uh respond to questions in the chat. If you um have any other questions, if not, I thank you so much for your time and attention, and please let us know how we can help you in preparing either for the next gen bar exam or for the current UBE. — So there's a question about a recording of the webinar. I'm going to ask one of our panelists to please answer that question. Um how to start prep if I will take next gen next year. Um it depends when next year, February 2027 or July 2027. Um that's too broad of a question for me to answer here because I don't know your specific circumstances. That will be a perfect question to call and ask Tresa. Um she is an expert on guiding students on how to begin their work and so I um I encourage you to uh take a conversation with her. Looks like the answer is July. That's great. You have a full year to prepare. Um so definitely earlier is better than later. So getting started with these materials, getting access to these materials early on is a great idea. Yes, next gen our JD Advising will be publishing attack outlines for next gen. I'm so glad you brought those up. Um we have our UBE attack outlines. If you're not familiar with those, I really recommend that you check those out on our website. We are currently updating, even though it's a new product, our UBE um attack outlines and then will we be

starting on our next gen attack outlines. We're super excited about that. Okay, and then um whether or not we'll have another session, I'm positive we'll be having many next gen webinars. So keep an eye on our free webinars page on our website. Um if you're on our email mailing list, you'll probably be getting emails alerting you to when these webinars are coming. Um in terms of was a question, do you suggest attempting the next gen bar exam this July after repeated attempts at the regular bar or should I sit for February 2027? That is a pretty detailed conversation that you would need to have with one of our account executives and better yet a tutor. If you have the opportunity to sign up for a tutoring session, be a great thing to discuss with a tutor. It's hard to say exactly although one thing that I will say this is kind of like a general piece of advice I guess that I give is that if you struggle with timing on the essays, being they multiple the multistate essay exam and if that is one of the major things keeping you from passing the exam, you might want to consider the next gen bar exam just because there are no essays like that on the exam. Now, there are integrated question sets and you may struggle with them just as much or more. So it's not an out necessarily but it's something that you might want to think about. Take a look at your scores when you've been failing if you're failing because you're not doing well on the MPT or the multiple choice, then switching to the next gen bar exam may or may not make a lot of difference for you. And is it easier to pass? We don't know. I think it's a very individual thing. I think for some people it may be easier for some of the reasons that I just talked about but the complexity of the organization of the exam is not something to take lightly and especially if you've been studying for the next gen bar exam. I'm sorry the regular UBE, excuse me. Making that switch could make the next gen UBE a little more difficult. So my recommendation is to expose yourself to as much material as you can for the next gen bar exam. Familiarize yourself with the types of questions and that will help you understand whether or not these types of questions, whether this approach is in fact easier for you. Okay. There's a question about whether there's MPT type questions on the next gen bar. Yes, they are. Instead of being called MPTs, they're now just called performance tasks. Um and they are shorter. So, right now it takes you have 90 minutes essentially to finish an MPT. On the next gen bar exam, you have three PTs and they're an hour each. And there are two types of PTs and this is something that I talked about in the previous webinar is that there are some that are very much like the MPTs and there's not. They are called legal writing performance tasks. So, um take a look at those. You can also look at the NCBE's website, learn more about those. All right. Well, thank you again so much everyone for attending. We're going to uh close things up here and I hope you have a wonderful day and feel free to reach out to us if we can offer any more help.