The Exam Day Playbook.

NextGen UBE · July 28–29, 2026 · First administration

Everything about the exam, so your studying can stay about the law. Prefer it on paper or your phone? Get the print-designed PDF by email ↓

The exam at a glance

If your jurisdiction tests local law, day two may run longer — check your board's notices.

1. The format, in plain terms

You are in the first cohort ever to take this exam. That sounds scarier than it is: the lawbeing tested is the law you already studied. What's new is the package.

What's tested. Eight doctrinal subjects can appear anywhere: business associations, civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, real property, and torts. Two more — family law and trusts & estates — appear only in skills-focused questions through February 2028, and the exam provides the legal resources you need for them. Do not spend July re-memorizing intestate-succession charts; when those subjects show up, the law will be on your screen.

Three question types:

• Multiple-choice questions (~40% of exam time). Four to six answer options — and, unlike the old MBE, some questions have more than one correct answer("select two" formats). Many early questions will still feel like classic MBE items.
• Integrated question sets (~25% of exam time). A common fact scenario followed by a mix of multiple-choice and short written answers, sometimes with legal resources attached. These test lawyering judgment — investigation, counseling, negotiation, ethics — not just rule recall.
• Performance tasks (~33% of exam time). The longer writing assignments, descended from the MPT: a File and a Library, closed universe, one deliverable. One variant — the legal research performance task — mixes multiple-choice and short answers with a medium-length writing assignment.

Scoring. You get a single score on a 500–750 scale. Your jurisdiction publishes its own passing score. There is no separate written/MBE breakdown to obsess over.

2. Session structure

Tuesday, July 28 — morning session (3 hours). ~40 MCQs, two integrated sets, one performance task.

Tuesday, July 28 — afternoon session (3 hours). Same shape. The afternoon session is where fatigue shows up: plan lunch (light), caffeine (normal — this is not the day to experiment), and a real break off screens.

Wednesday, July 29 — morning session (3 hours).Same shape, then you're done — a half day earlier than the old exam. Book nothing for Wednesday afternoon except a nap.

Every session has the same anatomy, which is a gift: by Tuesday lunchtime you'll have seen every question type the exam uses. Wednesday holds no new structure — at most a variant of a task you've already met.

3. Timing strategy

NCBE describes the time weighting as roughly 40% MCQ / just over 25% integrated sets / about a third performance task. Applied to one 180-minute session, that's approximately:

Five rules that survive contact with the clock:

1. Protect the performance task hour.It's the single biggest block of points in the room. Decide in advance whether you write it first or last — then do the same thing in all three sessions. (Practicing full tasks under 60 minutes before exam week is how you make this decision with data instead of vibes. You can run one under the clock here — first one's free →)
2. 1.8 minutes is a ceiling, not a goal.Most MCQs should take less; that's how you buy time for the handful of long ones in each block that need diagram-on-scratch-paper thinking.
3. On "select two" questions, find both or flag it.Whether or not partial credit exists, hunting for a second answer you can't see is the classic time sink. Pick your best, flag, move.
4. Integrated sets front-load reading. The scenario is shared across every question in the set — read it once, properly, and the questions get cheap. Skimming it twice costs more than reading it once.
5. Leave nothing blank. There is no penalty for guessing on multiple choice. In the last two minutes of any section, flags become answers.

4. The software checklist

This is the part of exam day that is entirely within your control — and the part with a hard cutoff.

Before your jurisdiction's deadline — Connecticut and Maryland publish Wednesday, July 22, 2026; your notice states yours (mandatory — no exceptions):

• Complete NCBE's system compatibility check on the laptop you will actually bring
• Complete the interactive exam tutorial (the free public version is at ngtutorial.starttest.com — do it early, then do the official required one)
• Complete every other readiness step your jurisdiction lists (registration confirmations, policy acknowledgments)

Miss the deadline and you will not be permitted to sit. Do these the week of July 13, not July 21 — if the compatibility check fails, you want days to fix or replace the machine, not hours.

Laptop prep (our advice, learned the hard way by generations of laptop-exam takers):

• Run all pending OS updates now, then pause updates for exam week — an update that starts at 8:55 a.m. Tuesday is a catastrophe you can schedule your way out of
• Disable sleep/hibernate on lid-close and on timer; disable notifications
• Uninstall or disable anything that pops over the screen (screen recorders, clipboard managers, game overlays)
• Charge to 100% the night before and pack the charger — expect to keep the laptop plugged in for the duration (Connecticut and Maryland both say so; your notice will confirm outlet details)
• Know your login password cold (biometric login can fail after restarts)

What to bring Tuesday morning:

• The same laptop that passed the compatibility check — not a backup, not your partner's
• A functional charger
• Government-issued photo ID matching the name on your application
• Whatever your jurisdiction's admission ticket says — print it and read it twice; permitted-items lists vary by jurisdiction
• Leave phones, smartwatches, and every other wearable out of the exam room unless your ticket explicitly permits them — assume they're banned

Some jurisdictions keep a limited number of backup laptops at test sites for true in-exam software emergencies — check your board's notice, and assume yours doesn't. Either way they're for examinees who did everything right and got unlucky, not a plan B. Your plan A, B, and C is the checklist above.

In the software: you can adjust font size, change the color scheme, and toggle the timer display. Decide your preferences in the tutorial, not at 9:00 a.m. on exam day.

5. The last 72 hours

• Saturday/Sunday: one full-length practice session (3 hours, one sitting, all three question types). Not to learn law — to calibrate the clock.
• Monday: logistics day. Drive/transit route to the test site, parking, ID + charger + laptop in one bag by the door. Light review only. Early night.
• Tuesday & Wednesday: eat breakfast you've eaten before, arrive early, and remember: every person in that room is taking this exam for the first time in history. Nobody has an experience edge on you.

One rule that outlasts the exam: NCBE's confidentiality terms bar discussing exam content — between sessions, that night, and online. Debrief about how you feel, not about what was asked.

This playbook is current as of mid-July 2026 and based on NCBE and jurisdiction publications. Your jurisdiction's official notices control — when anything here conflicts with them, believe them, not us.