NextGen Bar Exam Subjects — and What Changes in 2028

The single most common question about the NextGen bar exam — right after "when does my state switch?" — is what subjects are actually on it. The answer is shorter than the legacy exam's list, but it comes with two twists the old exam never had: provided-resource subjects and a scheduled scope change in July 2028.

Everything below tracks NCBE's published Content Scope Outline, which is the authoritative document. Bookmark it; when in doubt, the outline wins.

The 8 Foundational Concepts & Principles (July 2026 – February 2028)

These are the doctrinal subjects that can appear anywhere on the exam — standalone MCQs, integrated question sets, or performance tasks.

1. Business Associations

Agency, partnerships, corporations and LLCs, fiduciary duties, and veil-piercing. Agency doctrine is the sleeper here: it powers question sets about who bound whom, and it interlocks with Contracts constantly. On the legacy exam this was essay-only territory (MEE); on NextGen it sits in the MCQ pool like everything else.

2. Civil Procedure

Jurisdiction, venue, pleadings, discovery, dispositive motions, and preclusion under the Federal Rules. Historically one of the lowest-scoring MBE subjects — dense, rule-numbered, and counterintuitive — and its skills-question potential (motion practice, discovery disputes) makes it a natural for integrated question sets.

3. Constitutional Law

Judicial power, federalism, due process, equal protection, and the First Amendment. The doctrinal frameworks (tiers of scrutiny, state action, speech categories) reward structured memorization — this is a subject where knowing the map is most of the battle.

4. Contracts

Formation, defenses, terms, performance, breach, and remedies, at common law and under UCC Article 2. Contracts is the connective tissue of the exam: counseling sets, drafting tasks, and remedies analysis all route through it. If you only had time to over-prepare one subject, this would be a defensible pick.

5. Criminal Law & Constitutional Protections of Accused Persons

Substantive crimes (homicide, theft, inchoate offenses, accomplice liability) plus the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment protections that used to live under "Criminal Procedure." NextGen folds them into one subject — which matches how the issues actually arrive: a search question inside a prosecution fact pattern.

6. Evidence

Relevance, hearsay and its exemptions and exceptions, impeachment, character evidence, privileges, and expert testimony under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Evidence is also the natural home of the legal-research performance task variant — quick, targeted "is this admissible" questions with provided authorities.

7. Real Property

Estates and future interests, concurrent ownership, landlord-tenant, easements and covenants, mortgages, and conveyancing. The exam's most vocabulary-heavy subject; flashcard-friendly, and the place where NCBE's memorize-level markers (more on those below) earn their keep.

8. Torts

Intentional torts, negligence, strict liability, products liability, and defamation. High-volume and fact-pattern driven — the subject where timed MCQ reps convert most directly into points.

The provided-resource twist: Family Law and Trusts & Estates

Through February 2028, Family Law and Trusts & Estates appear on every administration — but only in skills questions where the exam supplies the legal resources. A question set might hand you three sections of a (fictional) marital-property statute and ask you to apply them to a client's facts.

What that means in practice:

• There is nothing to memorize. The law arrives with the question.
• There is absolutely something to practice. Reading unfamiliar statutes fast, extracting elements, and applying them under time pressure is a trained skill, not a given.

We wrote a dedicated explainer — how provided-resource questions work — because this is the single most misunderstood part of the scope.

The July 2028 change: Family Law graduates into a fully tested doctrinal subject (NCBE has published a dedicated Family Law scope for 2028). If you are studying for July 2028 or later — which includes the first NextGen cohorts in New York, California, Texas, and Florida — treat Family Law like the other eight.

The 7 Foundational Skills

NCBE tests seven skills across all item types: legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management.

These aren't a subject you sit down and outline — they are how the doctrinal subjects get tested. A counseling-themed question set grades counseling skill through contracts doctrine; a performance task grades writing through whatever law its Library contains. Our Skills & Ethics section collects the frameworks plus the tested rules of professional conduct.

Starred topics: what NCBE says to memorize

Inside the Content Scope Outline, NCBE distinguishes topics candidates must know from memory from topics that will come with legal resources provided. On every BARGO subject page, the memorize-level topics carry a ★ marker, imported straight from the scope.

This distinction should drive your study allocation:

• ★ topics → flashcards, closed-book recall, repeated MCQ drilling
• Unstarred topics → framework familiarity plus applied practice; don't burn memory work here

What's NOT on the NextGen exam

Comparing against the legacy exam's essay list, several MEE stalwarts have no standalone place in the NextGen scope — most notably Conflict of Laws and Secured Transactions (UCC Article 9). Trusts & Estates survives only in the provided-resource form described above until 2028. If your outline stack came from a UBE course, prune it against the current scope before you spend hours on law the exam can't reach. The full comparison is in NextGen vs. the legacy UBE.

How to allocate study time across subjects

A few honest heuristics, in order of confidence:

1. Weight by scope size. Torts, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, and Criminal Law carry the most topics in the published scope; they need more calendar than compact subjects like Business Associations.
2. Front-load your weak doctrinal subjects. Weakness compounds: it costs you MCQs directly and poisons question sets that build on the same doctrine.
3. Interleave skills work throughout. Written items carry 51% of the score — a performance task every week from week one beats a PT cram in the final fortnight. Our free study plan builds this interleaving automatically around your actual administration date.
4. Let a diagnostic pick your starting point. Ten questions in, you'll know which of the four heuristics above matters most for you. The free diagnostic exists for exactly that.

The short version

Know the scope, respect the stars, practice the skills. The subjects are the most knowable part of a brand-new exam — NCBE told everyone exactly what's fair game.