New bar exam sees rocky rollout in MD and beyond, but some prefer format

The long-awaited NextGen bar exam got off to a rocky start last month, with the three jurisdictions with the most test-takers, including Maryland, facing delays in the first administration of the new test.

The delay was resolved fairly quickly, according to Micah Yarbrough, director of bar preparation at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, because the Maryland State Board of Law Examiners had reserved “loaner” laptops in case of emergency.

“It did not roll out as it was supposed to,” Yarbrough told The Daily Record.

But not every test-taker had that experience. Joe Catron, one of the nearly 800 Maryland NextGen bar exam participants, didn’t experience any delays.

“I personally did not have any issues with the equipment — the computer program they were using — and I can also say nobody else in my section did either,” Catron, a graduate of the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, told The Daily Record.

Unlike Catron, who took the test at the University of Baltimore School of Law, the vast majority of Maryland test-takers were examined at the Baltimore Convention Center on July 28 and 29. Maryland was one of 10 states or territories that debuted the NextGen exam, the first time the bar was administered online-only.

Those aspiring lawyers faced an hour or more of uncertainty as some dealt with technical difficulties at the convention center.

The Maryland State Board of Law Examiners did not respond to a request for comment.

Compared to Missouri and Washington State, though, local test-takers got off easy. In Missouri, a several-hour delay forced the exam to start after noon, and a section of it was moved to the second day.

“It was horrible,” said Marsha Griggs, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law and an expert on bar reform. “The students are distressed. ‘Distressed’ is one word that describes pretty much every person that I heard from.”

Washington was forced to cancel the test altogether due to what the National Conference of Bar Examiners said was a “venue-specific infrastructure issue” at the main testing location. Only a few dozen people, who were at other locations, were able to take it. First-timers can take the test in September or February, or they can skip it and gain admission to the Washington state bar by court order. If they take the last option, though, they can’t gain admission to other state bars without taking the test.

Nationwide, 2,640 examinees “successfully” completed the test, according to the NCBE. In Washington, 645 were unable to take it.

One Maryland law grad attempted to take the test in Washington, Yarbrough said, and none took it in Missouri. Neal Kempler, director of bar success at UBalt’s law school, said no alumni from this year’s class took the test in either of those states, and he wasn’t aware of alumni from earlier years taking the test there either.

“It was just unreal that that was how the NextGen rolled out across the country,” Yarbrough said. He said he hoped for an external investigation to determine why there were so many issues.

The NextGen, which is replacing the legacy Uniform Bar Exam in phases, is intended to test practical lawyering skills more than rote memorization. Aspiring lawyers can be admitted in any state if their score meets that state’s threshold.

Catron, who took the Uniform Bar Exam in July 2025 and the NextGen exam a year later, said the exams were similar but agreed that the latter was “more practical.” He detailed how the multiple-choice sections remained, but the writing portion made the difference.

Catron said he was up against short-form written responses after a series of multiple-choice questions.

“You’re generally given a fact pattern, and then you answer questions based off of that,” he said of the writing questions.

However, Catron was also tested with a long-form performance test question to assess his skills regarding writing motions or memorandums, and sending emails to clients or other attorneys rather than his ability to memorize statute, which he said was “far more practical than the traditional bar.”

Catron, who did an externship with a Maryland attorney during his final semester of law school, said the NextGen exam was more “real-world-esque” than the Universal Bar Exam.

“The last bar exam was just … very extremely based on memorization and memorizing black-letter law and this and that, but not much in terms of practicality,” he said.

Yarbrough, Griggs and Kempler all said that delays aside, they liked the content of the new version, with Yarbrough calling it “a step in the right direction.”

Catron agreed.

“No lawyer has to on-the-spot remember some random statute in some area of law they never practice,” he said. “Having questions where they give you the statute, and then you have to know how to take it in and relate it to the facts provided was very relaxing for me because I had confidence in my knowledge. I had confidence in how to apply it.”

Kempler said he spoke to some alumni and several of his counterparts at other schools in NextGen jurisdictions. He said the delay at the convention center was short enough that it didn’t ruin the day.

“They didn’t feel like it threw them off too much,” he said. “It wasn’t a super long delay.” But, he added, “I certainly do not in any way want to diminish what any applicant felt in that moment.”

Kempler said the resources provided by the NCBE and the private bar-prep companies turned out to be “pretty well aligned with what they saw on the exam.”

Five years ago, the Association of Academic Support Educators, where Griggs chairs the bar advocacy committee, recommended best practices for the administration of the exam, including printed backup tests in case of technological failures. She said the NCBE operates without transparency.

“I have to be competent, but the folks who are responsible for administering this exam don’t have to show competency,” Griggs said. “That is the biggest contradiction in our profession right now.”