First-Year Torts Supplement Helps Students Prepare for NextGen Bar Exam

The Next Generation Bar Exam will debut in July 2026.  This new exam will test a broad range of foundational skills.  "The NextGen exam will have fewer stand-alone multiple-choice questions, and the traditional essay questions will be replaced with integrated question sets, requiring students to read and apply primary legal and factual resources to certain fact patterns under time pressure."

Law schools will need to develop new approaches to help their students prepare for the exam.  As it turns out, I have already published a book for first-year students that can help them prepare for the new type of testing:

A Companion to Torts: Learning to Think Like a Torts Lawyer by Doing Exercises

I believe that my book will help students get accustomed to the new kinds of thinking they will need for the new exam.  My book begins with simple exercises and gradually works up to more challenging ones.  In the early chapters, exercises cover issue spotting, application of the law to the facts, retrieval exercises, and simple problem solving.  These chapters also introduce the five types of legal reasoning--rule-based reasoning, reasoning by analogy, distinguishing cases, rule synthesis, and policy-based arguments.  Later chapters add drafting complaints and more complicated problem solving.  One chapter is devoted to a single products liability problem.  The types of exercises include multiple choice, integrated question sets, short answer, extended answer, reflection questions, and metacognitive questions.  Answers appear at the end of each chapter.

(Scott Fruehwald)