Recommended Citation
Laura Wilcoxon, A Next-Generation Framework: Using Critical Legal Research Pedagogy to Prepare Law Students for the NextGen Bar Exam, 42 Legal Reference Services Q. 71 (2023), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles/1115
Publication Title
Legal Reference Services Quarterly
Keywords
NextGen Bar Exam, legal pedagogy, legal education, legal research
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Ready or not, the bar is being raised. The next entering class of law students could sit for the NextGen Bar Examination in 2026. For the first time, recent law school graduates will be asked to demonstrate their proficiency in legal research to become licensed to practice law.
Law librarians can begin to prepare students endeavoring to pass the NextGen bar—and to achieve ultimate success as lawyers well-equipped at legal research—by incorporating critical legal research and critical legal information literacy pedagogy into legal research instruction. The phrase critical legal research was first coined in 2015, and it describes the application of different critical legal theory approaches to the legal research process. Critical legal information literacy “enables students to develop a critical consciousness about legal information.” Critical pedagogy can help students master analytic and metacognitive skills, which are abilities that will be tested under the legal research section on the NextGen Bar Examination.
This article presents a tool for law librarians to prepare law students for the new licensing paradigm by first discussing the two released NextGen Bar Examination research principles, then tracing the literature on critical legal research and critical legal information literacy pedagogy, and, finally, by proposing a critical framework that can be overlaid onto any legal research instruction.
