On Wednesday, Illinois announced its decision to switch to the NextGen Bar Exam in 2028, becoming the largest jurisdiction to adopt the revised national attorney licensing exam.
Illinois now joins 18 other states or territories in committing to the NextGen bar exam, marking the first significant overhaul of the test in 25 years. The National Conference of Bar Examiners began developing the new test in 2021, aiming to emphasize legal skills and reduce the reliance on memorization of laws.
Illinois officials have yet to decide whether the switch will occur in February or July 2028, according to the Supreme Court of Illinois’ announcement. The new test eliminates the three separate components of the current exam—the 200-multiple-choice question Multistate Bar Exam, the Multistate Essay Exam, and the Multistate Performance Test. The NextGen exam will also be shorter, at nine hours instead of the current 12-hour test, and will be administered entirely on computers.
Larger bar exam states have been slow to commit to the new test. None of the five jurisdictions with the highest number of bar examinees—New York, California, Florida, Texas, and the District of Columbia—have announced if or when they will move to the NextGen bar exam. Illinois, the sixth-largest, had 1,998 people take its July test this year.
The State Bar of California proposed a plan to split from the National Conference of Bar Examiners and develop its own bar exam to save up to $4 million annually, though officials put that proposal on hold this month.
Six jurisdictions, including Maryland and Missouri, will adopt the new test at the first opportunity in July 2026. Another ten jurisdictions plan to switch by July 2027. Colorado, Kansas, and Utah will make the switch in July 2028. The National Conference of Bar Examiners will offer both the current bar exam and the NextGen test from July 2026 until February 2028, after which only the new version will be available.
