To prepare for the NextGen bar exam, academic support professionals at Mitchell Hamline have been developing and testing methodologies and tips to help our students effectively work through the three new question types on the NextGen bar exam - Counseling Integrated Question Sets, Drafting Integrated Question Sets, and Research Performance Tasks. Last year, we published an article in the Wisconsin Law Review Forward setting forth a methodology and tips for completing Counseling Integrated Question Sets, NextGen Bar Success: A Student-Tested, Student-Approved Method for Completing Counseling Integrated Question Sets. This, year we have developed - and would like to share with the broader ASP community - methodologies and tips for completing Drafting Integrated Questions Sets and Research Performance Tasks. In Fall 2025, we tested these methodologies and tips with over 250 students at Mitchell Hamline, solicited student feedback, and made responsive refinements. In Spring 2026, we will incorporate these stress-tested methodologies and tips into Mitchell Hamline's new NextGen bar preparation courses as our first students prepare to take the NextGen bar exam in July 2026. During this presentation, we will share with our ASP colleagues: (1) the methodologies and related tips we developed, (2) the student feedback we received, and (3) the adjustments we made based on that feedback.

We are in a period of transition for bar licensure across the country, and Academic Success Professionals are at the forefront. The new NextGen UBE, debuting in July 2026, demands not only doctrinal proficiency but also integrated legal reasoning, communication, and problem-solving skills. It also purports to calls for the formation of professional identity and ethical judgment — core competencies that the ABA and the legal profession increasingly recognize as essential to competent practice. Four professors from across the country have spent the past year preparing for and teaching the NextGen UBE as their states are among the first to adopt the new bar exam. They will share their experiences, materials, and insights. This session will offer practical ideas on how to adjust bar preparatory curriculum to the new bar. Attendees will leave with course-specific design suggestions that allow for prepping for two versions of the bar exam in a single course. There will also be time for a lively discussion.

As a national law school, each year Mitchell Hamline School of Law (Minnesota) has hundreds of students sit for the uniform bar exam across the country. The first administration of the NCBE's NextGen bar exam in July 2026 presented a challenge (and opportunity) to develop a new and engaging bar prep course tailored to the new structure of the exam and the new (and unique) demands it introduces. Two full-time academic support and bar prep faculty members worked to develop the course at such a pace and that, at times, they were building the virtual NextGen bar prep plane while simultaneously trying to fly it. Along the way, a host of challenges presented themselves - from mundane tasks like simply routing the right students to the new course (not quite so simple), to more consequential tasks like defining the partnership and sharing of resources with our commercial content provider, defining course objectives and learning outcomes, devising means of student evaluation, and creating (and then teaching) a 14-week curriculum that balanced the interests of content, skill-building, and assessment. This was all done with one goal in mind: to ensure our inaugural (and very small) cohort of bar examinees pass the NextGen exam on the first attempt. It wasn't easy, but ultimately a plane with wings was assembled, set to take these new graduates on a flight path to first-time passage. This interactive presentation will cover the successes and failures of the whole process and will share tips, tricks, praises, and pitfalls for any bar support professional that may be looking to develop a similar NextGen course for their own school.

During this panel discussion, Karen Glover from the University of Mississippi School of Law, and members of the In-School Programming Team at Helix Bar Review by AccessLex, will share their experiences transitioning from UBE-focused courses to NextGen courses. In addition to focusing on the professor's perspective, they will share reflections from students regarding how they felt about each component of the NextGen Bar Exam. The panelists have spent the past year developing NextGen-focused pre-bar courses for second and third-year students. They will reflect on what worked and what didn't - including lessons learned from trying to teach to both the UBE and NextGen UBE in a single class, and having separate class sections. They will also discuss their experiences in providing feedback to students on integrated question sets and performance tasks, and how that experience was similar to and different from providing feedback on UBE essays and MPTs. Finally, they will share some insight from metacognitive assessment questions asked of the students as they approached the various components of the NextGen Bar Exam.

The Next Generation Bar Exam (NextGen) introduces an innovative approach to assessing lawyering skills, emphasizing integrated reasoning, practical application, and client-focused problem-solving. While this evolution aligns with modern practice, it requires intentional strategies to ensure that students with heightened support needs, those who benefit from additional resources and structured guidance, are fully prepared to thrive. Students with lower academic performance, non-traditional backgrounds, or test anxiety are our focus. This proposal shares a proactive, strengths-based framework to help these students leverage their potential and succeed. Objectives 1. Recognize and respond to early indicators of heightened support needs. 2. Equip students with skills aligned to NextGen competencies through targeted, inclusive programming. 3. Foster confidence and resilience by emphasizing growth and capability. Key Opportunities and Challenges Opportunity: NextGen rewards applied reasoning and practical skills—areas where students can excel with structured practice. Challenge: Transitioning from memorization to integrated analysis may require scaffolding and confidence-building. Opportunity: Digital testing platforms offer efficiency and accessibility when students are supported in mastering them. Challenge: Complex, multi-step questions require advanced reasoning under time constraints. Call to Action AASE members are invited to collaborate on creating shared resources, best practices, and research initiatives to ensure equitable success, especially for those students with heightened support needs, under the NextGen framework.

This presentation examines the implementation and instructional lessons learned from a full semester teaching our first law-school course intentionally developed to prepare students for the NextGen UBE bar exam, which will be administered for the first time in Washington State in July 2026. Our goal is to offer concrete, classroom-grounded guidance for law schools seeking to proactively and thoughtfully prepare students for this new exam. Drawing on Washington's early adoption of the NextGen UBE exam, the presentation centers on what we learned by teaching students under the new assessment model. We will walk through the key pedagogical decisions involved in coordinating a NextGen-aligned course with a commercial vendor and describe how the course was structured, taught, and experienced by students over the semester. Central to the discussion is an analysis of how students actually learned and performed across the new test formats administered during the course, including areas of strength as well as points of struggle. We will highlight patterns that emerged in student performance, engagement, and feedback, and explain how these observations informed mid-course instructional adjustments and assessment design. Finally, we reflect on broader lessons from the classroom, including challenges related to assessment calibration, student expectations, and student buy-in. The presentation concludes with practical, experience-based recommendations for institutions preparing to teach to the NextGen UBE bar exam and to support students through the transition from the UBE to this new framework

First-year law students often focus on identifying the "right" legal answer, yet the NextGen Bar Exam and legal practice demand more: sound judgment, strategic reasoning, and client-centered decision-making in high-stakes contexts. This session introduces simulated NextGen-style client exercises to teach first-year foundational legal analysis skills through the lens of real client problems. Participants will experience a sample exercise designed to introduce students to law school while developing critical skills for practice and the NextGen Bar Exam. The curriculum integrates instruction on core analytical skills with guided in-class simulations that require students to analyze legal issues, weigh options, and advise clients. The presentation will focus on how early exposure to client-centered analysis improves student engagement and builds transferable skills that support academic success, professional identity formation, and bar readiness. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for implementing NextGen-style exercises in 1L courses, including scaffolding techniques, assessment considerations, and ready-to-use ideas that minimize faculty preparation time while maximizing student impact.

When faculty at your law school ask for your Academic Success Professional help in adapting course content to prepare students for the NextGen bar exam, are you ready? This presentation will deliver a tool kit for adapting traditional law school exam questions and formative assessments, like midterm exams, into questions that are aligned with NextGen-style questions. After attending this session, ASPers will leave having adapted one question following our guide and will be able to present to faculty at their institutions to do the same or assist with adaptations. Presented by ASP professionals who have authored AccessLex performance tasks, Building Bar Skills Modules, and who have presented on adapting other course content for the Gen Z learner, this interactive workshop brings a practical, straightforward, and integrated approach to retrofitting law school assessment for both faculty and student benefit.

This 45-minute presentation focuses on strengthening collaboration between academic support and bar preparation faculty and doctrinal faculty to support student success in bar exam preparation, particularly in light of the evolving demands of the NextGen Bar Exam. As skills-based assessment becomes more central, law schools must rethink how instruction and support align across the curriculum. The presentation is divided into three parts. Part One examines the evolution of academic support and bar preparation within legal education. Historically, these roles were often viewed as supplemental, siloed, and primarily remedial. This section explores how academic success and bar preparation roles have evolved over the years. Marlese Wells will share insights from seven years in academic support and bar preparation, while Kambria Anderson will offer a perspective from her first year in the field, highlighting how both the role and perception of academic support have shifted over time. Part Two highlights current practices at Florida A&M University College of Law, with a focus on skills-based coursework, including the Introduction to Analytical Skills course. This section shares concrete examples of programming, skills integration, and intentional collaboration with doctrinal faculty to introduce, reinforce, and integrate these skills into substantive law courses in preparation for the NextGen Bar Exam. Part Three concludes with an idea sharing group discussion. Participants will reflect on administrative involvement in NextGen implementation and the level of doctrinal faculty engagement in skills integration and bar readiness, followed by group sharing to identify strategies, challenges, and opportunities across institutions.

With the NextGen Bar Exam on the horizon, law schools face the urgent task of reimagining bar preparation. The new exam demands a synthesis of doctrinal knowledge and lawyering skills, moving beyond rote memorization. However, a significant logistical hurdle looms for many institutions: the "hybrid" period, where schools must simultaneously prepare cohorts for the Legacy UBE and the NextGen exam. In this 55-minute session, Chris Fromm (UWorld) and Chris Engle-Newman (Denver Law) unveil a concrete sample lesson plan designed for a single-semester NextGen Early Bar Prep course. This presentation moves beyond theory, offering a blueprint for teaching the specific modalities of the new exam—including Integrated Question Sets, Multi-Select Multiple-Choice Questions, and the evolved Performance Task. Attendees will explore strategies for integrating foundational skills (issue spotting, legal research, and writing) directly into the curriculum. The presenters will also lead a targeted discussion on the challenge of managing student anxiety and curriculum design during the transition years when both exam formats are relevant.