NCBE offers scoring range on new bar exam, but some want more information
Corrected: The National Conference of Bar Examiners released passing score recommendations for the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam set to debut next July, settling some open questions but raising others, sources say.
For the new skills-based test, the NCBE recommends passing scores between 610 and 620 on a scale of 500 to 750 according to the Guidance Brief on the Recommended NextGen UBE Passing Score Ranges. The legacy Uniform Bar Exam has passing scores ranging from 260 to 270 on a scale of 200 to 400, according to Kara Smith, the NCBE chief product officer.
“The recommended range reflects careful psychometric study and collaboration across the bar admissions community,” said Judith A. Gundersen, the NCBE president and CEO, in a release. “It represents a balance between continuity and innovation—grounded in evidence, shaped by expert judgment, and designed to maintain public confidence in the fairness, validity and equity of bar admissions.”
The NCBE’s psychometric team worked with external partners, according to last week’s release, and recommendations were “reviewed by a passing score advisory panel composed of judges and bar examiners with extensive experience in the development of the NextGen exam.”
To date, 47 jurisdictions plan to adopt the skills-focused exam. Each jurisdiction will choose its own passing score, just as they do for the UBE.
According to the NCBE, in formulating the score recommendation, it considered a variety of things including: psychometric scaling and data from the prototype NextGen UBE; analyses linking performance on the current test and the NextGen UBE; studies with over 80 panelists from 43 jurisdictions to set standards for “minimally qualified” examinees, and outcome modeling that considers various passing score policies’ impact on jurisdictional pass rates and examinee outcomes, the release states.
The work is an “important positive,” says Joan Howarth, a professor emerita at the University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law and author of Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing, who helped create Nevada’s new three-pronged licensure system.
“Past and current passing rates in many jurisdictions have been a product of intuition, protectionist politics and tradition more than psychometrics,” she adds. “Serious standard-setting work has been undertaken, perhaps for the first time nationally.”
Some questions remain
Despite the Guidance Brief and a new Frequently Asked Questions offering information on how the NCBE’s research brought them to that scoring range, Howarth and others want more answers.
“NCBE has not yet released the kinds of reports routinely issued in other professions, and even released by state bars,” Howarth says.
Deborah Jones Merritt, a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, agrees. For instance, California and Oregon released reports detailing their standard-setting processes for their bar exams, including information on the assessment design, analysis and results.
“The FAQ stresses transparency, but NCBE hasn’t told us very much about their process in these two releases.”
Among the unanswered questions, Merritt says, is if the standard-setting committee or the advisory panel took the exam themselves. “This is a best practice for standard-setting,” the primary author of the Building a Better Bar study told the ABA Journal.
NCBE’s Smith told the Journal that 80 panelists, including judges, bar examiners, attorneys and legal educators, completed one of four overlapping sample sets from the full NextGen UBE for standard setting. A separate group served as advisors on the exam content and digital platform.
But Merritt wonders how the advisory panel weighed policies and their impacts, such as setting high passing scores to protect consumers from poor lawyering versus lower passing scores to ensure there are enough lawyers to meet consumer demand; if there was consensus among the people involved in the standard-setting study that this is the right range, and how the recommendations track with current pass rates. This is especially important considering the two exams focus on a different mix of knowledge and skills, Merritt says.
Smith told the Journal that the panel reviewed the triangulation of standard-setting results, concordance analyses, prototype results and outcome modeling, and considered the range recommended by the NCBE’s psychometricians that mapped legacy exam’s passing range.
“The panel then worked with the technical team to help jurisdictions understand how to interpret that range in light of their own policy contexts,” Smith adds. Jurisdictions have been given more information, such as “comprehensive technical research and analyses supporting the recommended passing score range to support informed and evidence-based passing score decisions.”
Still, with 10 jurisdictions set to administer the exam next year, Merritt wants more information shared. “There’s no reason to hide the ball on this. On the contrary, stakeholders will trust the process more if they have the kind of reports that states have published, along with details about the outcome analysis and the advisory panel’s deliberations,” she says. “Bottom line: Courts, bar examiners and test-takers deserve much more transparency.”
Corrected on Nov. 21 to reflect the number of jurisdictions set to administer the new exam in 2026. The article has also included clarifications as to the roles of NCBE panelists and recommended passing scores for the new exam.
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