California adopted the NextGen UBE on 15 July 2026, first sat in July 2028. The California-specific component comes a year later and is still provisional — so are the California subjects below.
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This is no longer a question of whether. On 15 July 2026 the California Supreme Court approved replacing the General Bar Exam with the NCBE's NextGen UBE, beginning with the July 2028 administration. If you are sitting before then you want the current California format; this page is for the people who will sit after.
The change arrives in two stages, and the gap between them is the part worth planning around. From July 2028 California administers the NextGen UBE itself — the national paper, nine hours over a day and a half, scored 500 to 750. A California-specific component follows separately, with a proposal due by 26 February 2027 and a launch beginning with the July 2029 administration.
So there is roughly a year — July 2028 to July 2029 — when California candidates sit the NextGen UBE without a California component at all. If that is your window, the honest answer is that you are preparing for the national exam, and the California-specific material on this page is optional reading rather than examinable content.
What the component will cover is not settled. The court said it would test areas of California law and may include subjects currently on the General Bar Exam, as well as California employment law and California family law. That is why those two appear here marked provisional. We would rather show you a list that says "not final yet" than a confident one that turns out to be wrong six months before you sit.
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Peppercorn's questions, model answers and outlines are generated by AI and checked by a second pass before you see them. They're built to be accurate and exam-realistic, but AI can be wrong. Use it to drill and stress-test your understanding, not as your only source of truth. Peppercorn is not affiliated with the NCBE, any state bar, the LSO or any law school.