Wyoming Supreme Court Adopts Nextgen Bar Exam

• Jurisdiction: Wyoming,United States
• Pages: 20
• Citation: Vol. 46 No. 6 Pg. 20
• Publication year: 2023

Wyoming Supreme Court Adopts NextGen Bar Exam Vol. 46 No. 6 Pg. 20 Wyoming Bar Journal December 2023

by Darin B. Scheer

The next evolution of the bar exam is coming to Wyoming. In October 2023, the Wyoming Supreme Court unanimously adopted the NextGen exam, beginning with the July 2027 administration. The NextGen exam is in the final stages of development by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), the same organization that provides the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) currently in use in Wyoming and 41 other jurisdictions. The first administration of Next Gen will occur in July 2026, but NCBE will continue to offer the UBE through July of 2028 for jurisdictions that have not adopted NextGen.

The development process for NextGen began in 2018 and will ultimately span a total of eight years. The Wyoming Board of Law Examiners (BLE), which has been closely monitoring the development process, recommended adoption of the NextGen exam in Wyoming based on the following factors:

1. NCBE has consistently provided a statistically valid and reliable bar exam with the UBE;

2. NCBE has undertaken a rigorous multi-year process to develop NextGen;

3. NextGen is the logical and sensible evolution of the UBE, involving similar doctrinal rigor but emphasizing practical lawyering skills in an integrated question format;

4. NextGen will provide score portability with other jurisdictions, furthering one of the primary objectives behind the Court's original adoption of the UBE; and

5. The alternative to NextGen would be for the BLE to return to drafting its own exam, which would not replicate the level of reliability or statistical validity the UBE has consistently provided and NextGen is expected to provide.

By adopting NextGen, the Court is ensuring that Wyoming applicants will continue to receive many of the benefits that formed the basis for the original decision to adopt the UBE, including: (i) test items drafted by committees of law professors, deans, judges and practicing attorneys from across the nation in a rigorous multi-year process for each item; (ii) statistical analysis ensuring that the test items "perform" in a valid and reliable^[1] way; (iii) the ability to ensure consistency over time by the statistical practice of "equating"^[2]scores—thereby ensuring that the items on one test are not harder or easier than the items given the following year; and, as noted above, (iv) portability—meaning the NextGen score could be used by...