This month, Utah law schools welcomed their latest cohort of future attorneys. The new students will be the first to take part in a significant change – a new bar exam.
Starting July 2028, would-be Utah lawyers will take the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination (NextGen UBE) to get their license. Law professors say the updated test will improve the quality and accessibilities of legal services in the state. It’s part of a greater push to ensure attorneys have the knowledge and the skills they need to best serve the public.
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) developed the NextGen UBE to replace the current Uniform Bar Exam. The Beehive State is adopting the new test after the state Supreme Court approved it last year. As of August 2025, 44 other jurisdictions across the country plan to administer NextGen UBE as early as next summer.
NextGen was created to better test the practical abilities attorneys need in modern practice. It shifts the focus from rote memorization, which the current bar has long faced criticism for.
“The Uniform Bar Exam as it exists right now is all about a very limited set of skills and a broad but shallow knowledge base about the law,” said Louisa Heiny, professor and associate dean of academic affairs at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
The NCBE conducted a three-year study to identify the skills students need to begin their career as an attorney. The updated exam will now test students on the application of those competencies. Catherine Bramble, associate professor of law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, said NextGen UBE is trying to mirror what a practicing attorney would see in their office.
“The hope is that NextGen will do a better job filtering who can provide that quality service,” Bramble said. “And in the studying and preparing for it, it's actually like helping these future lawyers become better at their trade and better at their craft.”
Bramble said the result will be more competent attorneys and better access to justice for Utahns.
“Everyone who interacts with an attorney, one would hope that their attorney is well-trained, that their attorney is representing them ethically and also with the highest level of skills,” she said.
But the bar exam isn’t the only way to prove someone’s abilities, according to Heiny. Utah is also looking at alternate pathways to legal licensure that would bypass the bar exam entirely. The Utah Supreme Court is considering a rule that would provide a “skills-based” approach to prove competency. That could include specific law courses, supervised practice and a performance evaluation.
“Both NextGen and all of these alternative paths are designed to help ensure that [attorneys] have the knowledge base, but also that they can do the thing that they're being licensed to do,” Heiny said.