The Role of Curriculum Mapping in Preparing for the NextGen Bar Exam
The NextGen Bar Exam is being adopted by more and more jurisdictions every day, with the first administration in July 2026 right around the corner. Many academic deans, bar passage professionals, and faculty members are feeling overwhelmed by the task of preparing their students for the new exam.
This is in part because the NextGen Bar Exam will test a myriad of skills that were not previously tested on the Uniform Bar Exam. For example, 60% of the exam will require students to read primary factual and legal sources and solve problems on that basis — as opposed to solving problems based on memorized rules of law and simplified fact patterns. Previously only 20% of the exam required students to work with primary sources. Moreover, students are not typically assessed with primary sources on their exams during their time in law school.
Instruction and assessment in these skills need to be infused throughout the law school curriculum. A school’s bar passage professional cannot do it alone, and there isn’t enough time, repetition, and opportunity for practice in a bar prep course for students to effectively acquire these skills.
That said, improving skills instruction at your law school is achievable, but it requires a cold, hard look at what is, and is not, being taught in your current curriculum so that you can target opportunities to introduce enhanced skills assessment and instruction.
This is where curriculum mapping comes in. What is curriculum mapping? It can take many forms, but its essential purpose is to give everyone at the law school a comprehensive picture of what is being taught, where it’s being taught, and how it’s being taught.
The process involves taking course syllabi and mapping them against a law school's chosen criteria, which might be NextGen Bar Exam subjects and skills, ABA requirements, or best practices in active learning and formative assessment. This information can then be supplemented by interviews with faculty and students, and can help provide a better understanding of law students’ cumulative learning experiences as they proceed through law school.
The mapping project can encompass the entire curriculum, including co-curricular activities, or be confined to the first-year curriculum, the required curriculum, or the experiential learning curriculum, to name just a few examples.
Improvement is not possible without measurement. Curriculum mapping measures where your curriculum is today, so that you can chart a path toward the future.
If you have questions about the curriculum mapping services LSAC offers, please contact me, Susannah Pollvogt, at spollvogt@LSAC.org.
