Washington calls off bar exam after NextGen UBE has tech issues
The first administration of the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination, a substantial shift in the high-stakes test planned for eight years, was marred Tuesday by connectivity issues in three of the 10 jurisdictions using the new test this week, forcing the two-day exam to be entirely canceled in Washington.
Reports of troubles started early in the day as candidates at the Yakima Convention & Event Center, about two hours southeast of Seattle, struggled to access the reinvented bar exam, as well as from those in Missouri and Maryland, according to a July 28 press release from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
While Missouri and Maryland candidates ultimately restarted after a delay, according to the NCBE, the Washington location could not resolve the “on-site hardware and configuration issue,” and test-takers were dismissed for the day, according to the press release.
Tuesday evening, however, the Washington State Bar Association canceled the entire exam.
“We do not have sufficient confidence that the technology issue has been resolved to safely resume the exam tomorrow,” according to a statement from Sara Niegowski, the chief communications and outreach officer for the Washington State Bar Association.
An email from the state bar association sent to candidates Tuesday afternoon, forwarded to the ABA Journal, gave test-takers three options: taking a make-up exam tentatively scheduled for Sept. 1 and 2; transferring to the February 2027 administration in Tacoma, Washington; or withdrawing and receiving a refund of applicable jurisdiction fees.
The skills-based test, which marks a shift from the legacy bar exam’s traditional administration via pencil and paper to candidates’ personal computers, is administered in three, three-hour sessions, each offering multiple-choice, essay and performance tests over two days.
Washington has three ABA-accredited law schools. About 700 applicants were scheduled to test in Washington, while about 650 and 800 were signed up to test in Missouri and Maryland, respectively, according to Faye McCray, the chief communications officer at the NCBE.
In the meantime, 52 jurisdictions have approved the NextGen UBE to start using by July 2028.
‘Another disaster’
These problems recall the troubled February 2025 launch of California’s proprietary hybrid bar exam, fraught with technical troubles that led to lawsuits and $5.1 million in costs plus millions more in lost revenue and legal costs.
“I thought the February 2025 California bar exam disaster would keep the record for worst debacle, but the NextGen launch—with an entire jurisdiction prevented from delivering its bar exam—is another disaster,” says Joan Howarth, the author of Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing. “The extent of the problems is shocking. Launching a new bar exam is difficult: California and the NCBE stumbled.”
Howarth is also a professor emerita at the University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law and a 2025 Journal Legal Rebel.
Other legal education academics are incensed.
“A thorough investigation is needed to identify the failures so that safeguards can be implemented to ensure this never happens again,” says Carrie Sanford, University of Washington School of Law director of academic success. “Losing the opportunity to take the exam, regardless of the circumstances, is unimaginable. My heart breaks for everyone who was impacted by yesterday’s events.”
Marsha Griggs, an associate professor at the St. Louis University School of Law, agrees.
“Innovation cannot come at the expense of reliability, and bar applicants should not bear the costs of institutional technological failures,” Griggs says. “What protections exist for applicants whose careers, finances and well-being are disrupted by failures beyond their control?”
Tony Varona, the dean of the Seattle University School of Law, posted his letter on LinkedIn to the Washington Supreme Court’s chief justice requesting diploma privilege for those who could not take the exam.
The NCBE has been working on the delivery elements for the NextGen UBE since 2020, and it started user testing in 2021, the NCBE officials previously told the Journal.
Test days, the NCBE officials said in those interviews, would work like this: Candidates will arrive at NCBE-approved locations around the country, equipped with secure Wi-Fi and backup internet hot spots.
Then, examinees use passwords specific to the room where they take the test to access Wi-Fi in a single sign-on system to prompt the first three hours of content to stream in an encrypted fashion onto their devices.
Two types of proctors were planned to monitor each room. One set, hired by the jurisdictions, would conduct standard proctoring, such as maintaining security of the exam and supporting candidates, the officials told the Journal. The others, after receiving extensive training by delivery platform provider Internet Testing Systems to handle tech issues, would be hired by the NCBE. If the Wi-Fi crashes mid-test, plans were to fire up some hot spots, the officials said in earlier interviews.
“In Washington, a redundant network was in place to support the scale of testing,” McCray says. “However, localized on-site network issues affecting both the primary and redundant networks persisted despite multiple mitigation efforts.
“We do not yet know the specific hardware issue that affected the Yakima testing location,” McCray adds.
She notes that testing venues are responsible for providing and maintaining network infrastructure.
What’s ahead?
As of press time, no issues have been reported Wednesday—the second day of testing—McCray says.
“One important takeaway is that the NextGen testing platform performed as designed across all testing locations, with localized network issues affecting a limited number of sites in three jurisdictions,” she says.
Others are concerned that all connectivity issues must be eliminated before the test rolls out over the next two years.
“This year’s failures occurred in states with fewer than 1,000 test-takers. What will happen when New York (about 10,000 July test-takers) or California (more than 7,000 July test-takers) attempts to administer this exam?” wrote Deborah Jones Merritt, a bar exam expert, a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and a 2025 Journal Legal Rebel, to the Journal. “NCBE chose a delivery system that many people predicted would cause issues in large convention centers. Those predictions were right.”
See also:
Washington law deans demand diploma privilege after aborted NextGen UBE administration
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