Court & LawInvestigate and evaluate the facts
A new matter arrives with a police report, interview excerpts and discovery. You find the facts that matter to each legal issue, see what is missing, decide how to investigate or draw it out and spot what can be improved or objected to, so you can weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each side. These are tasks the NCBE uses to measure investigation and evaluation on the NextGen bar exam.
Free to startScenarios
- The file has a police report and interview excerpts, with gaps in what was asked.
- The client's position depends on facts nobody has developed yet.
- Discovery responses arrive and some of them are incomplete.
The steps
- Identify which facts are likely to be relevant to or dispositive of each legal issue in the matter.
- Identify which facts still need to be investigated.
- Choose the best strategy to investigate or elicit those facts.
- Review the provided materials, such as police reports, interview excerpts or discovery.
- Identify the gaps in the information obtained.
- Suggest how the gathering of the information could be improved.
- Identify grounds for objection, if any apply.
- Use the facts to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the client's position and of the opposing party's position under the relevant legal rules and standards.
To pass
- The relevant and dispositive facts are identified for each issue.
- The missing facts are listed with a strategy to obtain them.
- The gaps, the improvements and any grounds for objection in the materials are identified.
Official source
NextGen UBE Content Scope, July 2026–February 2027 (August 2025)
The NCBE publishes the NextGen UBE Content Scope free, with the 28 tasks that measure the foundational lawyering skills.
Making Synapses is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the NCBE, the American Bar Association, the Virginia State Bar or any jurisdiction. NextGen, UBE and MBE are trademarks of their respective owners and are named only to describe the exams.