A second-year student in a housing clinic has done everything right on paper. She has researched the retaliation statute, checked every citation by hand, and used an AI tool to tighten her draft advice letter into two clean pages. Then the client arrives.
He is anxious and talks fast, and his first question is whether he will win. About twenty minutes in, almost as an aside, he mentions a written warning his landlord sent him last spring. It isn't in the intake notes, and it changes the analysis. The student has never had a client hold something back from her before. She hesitates, then reads him the conclusion from her letter anyway.
Her supervising attorney steps in and the client is fine. Anyone who has taught in a clinic will recognize the moment, though. Students arrive able to analyze a fact pattern. Far fewer arrive able to draw the facts out of a person who is frightened, embarrassed or hoping the bad part won't come up.
That gap used to be something the first few years of practice fixed. With AI now doing more of the drafting, it has moved to the center of the job, and licensing bodies in the US, the UK and Canada have each written it into how new lawyers are assessed.
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) gave the first NextGen Uniform Bar Exam in late July 2026. In total, 2,640 examinees sat it across 10 jurisdictions, and NCBE says 52 jurisdictions will be giving the new exam by July 2028.
Alongside doctrine, NextGen tests seven foundational lawyering skills. Four will be familiar to anyone who teaches legal research and writing: legal research, legal writing, issue spotting and analysis, and investigation and evaluation. The other three are about clients:
That is a real change in emphasis. The client relationship now sits on the licensing exam beside Contracts and Civil Procedure, as something a new lawyer is expected to handle competently from their first day in practice.
The list is grounded in data. NCBE's Testing Task Force built it on a nationwide practice analysis completed by nearly 15,000 lawyers, which asked what newly licensed lawyers actually do in their first three years. A separate study published in 2020 by IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, ran 50 focus groups in 12 states and reached a similar answer. Its definition of minimum competence includes "the ability to interact effectively with clients," and the new lawyers it spoke to described feeling overwhelmed by, and unprepared for, the range of clients they were serving.
One IAALS finding should interest anyone who writes exam hypotheticals. New lawyers said that identifying legal issues from real conversations with clients was much harder than spotting them in a written fact pattern. On an exam, every relevant fact is on the page. In an interview, the student has to go and get it.
In England and Wales, SQE2 includes a live client interview with an actor playing the client, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority marks that interview on skills alone. The quality of the legal advice is assessed separately, in the attendance note the candidate writes afterward. The SRA's assessment specification also allows negotiation to be assessed within the interview or the written tasks.
In Canada, the law societies of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan published a shared Competencies for Entry to Legal Practice profile in 2024. Three of its seven domains are about working with people: Communication, Professional Relationship Management, and Advice and Advocacy. The relationship domain expects new lawyers to establish, maintain and conclude client relationships using what it calls a "client-centred approach."
Each regulator reached this point through its own research and consultation, and they have ended up in much the same place.
Some faculty will read all this as regulators catching up on soft skills. The numbers on AI point to something more practical.
Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report found that 79% of legal professionals now use AI in their work in some form, and estimated that up to 74% of hourly-billed legal tasks could be automated. Thomson Reuters' Future of Professionals Report 2025, a survey of 2,275 professionals, found that respondents expect AI to save them about five hours a week within a year.
Most of those hours come out of drafting, summarizing and first-pass research. The intake interview and the difficult phone call stay with the lawyer. In the 2024 edition of the same Thomson Reuters report, 95% of professionals said that letting AI represent clients in court or make final decisions on complex matters would be a step too far.
Clients are changing too. Clio reports that 57% of consumers have used, or would use, AI to answer a legal question. The person in your students' first meeting may well arrive with a confident, chatbot-written view of their case. Some of it will be right and some of it won't. Telling that client, clearly and kindly, that their position is weaker than they were led to believe is a counseling task, and it falls to the lawyer.
There is a verification problem as well. Damien Charlotin's public database of court decisions involving AI-generated hallucinations passed 1,500 entries by mid-2026, three years after Mata v. Avianca made the issue famous. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) reminds lawyers that their duties of competence, confidentiality and communication all apply when they use generative AI, which can include explaining that use to the client under Model Rule 1.4. Knowing when to trust a draft and when to check it is a matter of judgment, and judgment grows out of working through real problems with real people.
As AI takes over more of the drafting, the bar exam has started testing what is left: the conversation with the client.
Most law faculty already agree that client skills matter. The harder problem is volume.
ABA Standard 303 requires every JD student to complete at least six credits of experiential coursework, and it asks that simulation courses give students multiple opportunities for performance. In practice, "multiple" often means two or three observed interviews a semester. Do the arithmetic for a 20-student interviewing and counseling seminar with one instructor. If each observed interview takes 30 minutes, giving every student five assessed interviews uses 50 hours of faculty time before anyone has written a word of feedback. Standardized clients help, but actors cost money and need scheduling, and clinic places are limited. Many students meet a live client for the first time in their final year.
So students practice on each other. Anyone who has run a peer role-play knows the limits. The classmate playing the client has read the file and tends to volunteer the answer the moment they're asked. They rarely sit on the fact that hurts their case, and they don't get defensive when a question lands too close. The interviewer gets a polite, cooperative witness, which is poor preparation for the person who walks into a clinic with something to hide.
The cost shows up after graduation. The Legal Ombudsman's 2024/25 data for England and Wales shows poor communication was the most common reason complaints against lawyers were upheld, at 25%, ahead of delay at 18%. Put another way, one in four upheld complaints is about how the lawyer communicated with the client, or failed to. US bar counsel offices have reported a similar pattern for years, with communication and neglect at or near the top of their complaint data.
Across the research, four features separate useful client-skills practice from a check-the-box exercise.
Students need clients who behave like clients. That means people who hold back, deflect, and become uneasy when confidentiality isn't explained. Much of what NextGen calls investigation and evaluation comes down to noticing what someone isn't telling you.
Students need repetition. Interviewing is a performance skill, closer to advocacy than to doctrine, and one graded interview a term builds fluency about as well as one moot court round builds an advocate.
Students need feedback straight after the conversation, while they still remember what they said and why they said it. A week's wait for comments on a recording loses most of that.
Faculty need evidence. Schools that teach and assess the NextGen client skills will want to show improvement for outcomes assessment, accreditation reviews and their own curriculum planning. That calls for consistent criteria and a record of each attempt, which an end-of-term impression can't provide.
AI roleplay is now being used to fill this gap, and there is a neat irony in that. The technology that has taken on so much of the drafting can also give students a client to practice with as often as they need. Bodyswaps' Real Clients, Rehearsed pathway, for example, puts students in conversation with AI clients who each hold something back. Dana Reyes, 52, is certain she is right about a property line dispute and has forgotten a letter she signed eighteen months ago. Alex Tran, 29, says he was dismissed for making a safety report and leaves out two written warnings for conduct.
After each conversation, an AI Coach debrief shows the student what worked and what to try next. Faculty see every assessed attempt scored against seven editable criteria mapped to the NextGen client skills and ABA Standards 302 and 303, with transcripts and progress for each student. The pathway is designed as preparation for live-client work, so that students reach the clinic having already had the uncomfortable conversation several times.
Most schools can show strong coverage of research, writing and analysis. Fewer can say where every student practices client counseling, negotiation and relationship management, and how often. If the honest answer is "in an elective some students take," it is better to know that now. NCBE publishes each jurisdiction's adoption date, and for most schools it falls in 2027 or 2028.
IAALS recommends that candidates for licensure complete coursework that develops their ability to work with clients. That coursework doesn't have to wait until the third year. A short, low-stakes interview with a client who withholds a fact gives first-year students a reference point for much of what Legal Writing and Civil Procedure go on to teach them.
Standard 303 already asks for multiple opportunities for performance, so treat that as a number worth tracking. A student who has interviewed five or six clients before a clinic semester walks in with far more confidence than one who has done a single exercise.
Grade the interview, and not only the memo that follows it. A good counseling rubric can be short. Did the student find the gap in the story without accusing the client? Were they honest about the weaknesses in the client's position? Did they set out more than one option, with the risks of each? Those criteria are observable, scorable and closely tied to the NextGen client skills.
Build at least one scenario in which the client has already asked an AI tool about their case and is attached to the answer. It is good practice in managing expectations, and it gives you a natural way into Model Rule 1.4 and Opinion 512 without a separate lecture. For advocacy courses, the same approach works for witness examination, which Bodyswaps covers in its Cross-Examination pathway.
AI is taking on more of the work that used to fill a junior lawyer's week, such as first drafts and document review. The bar exam has responded by testing more of what remains, and the SRA and Canada's western law societies have done the same. A new lawyer in 2028 will be judged partly on whether a nervous client trusts them enough to share the inconvenient fact, and on whether they can give honest advice once they have it.
Law schools have long known these skills matter. What has changed is that licensing now tests them, and AI makes it possible to practice them at a volume that clinics and actors could never offer on their own.
If you teach a skills course, clinic or 1L class that runs between January and March 2027, Bodyswaps is offering 15 free places to law educators in its spring 2027 Experiential Research Cohort. Every student on your course gets access to Real Clients, Rehearsed, and you get setup support plus scores, transcripts and AI Coach debriefs for each student. In return, the cohort asks for anonymized results and a short survey, and every participating program is named in the cross-institution findings report. Bodyswaps is trusted by 350+ colleges, universities and companies, and you can see how other institutions use it in our case studies.
Places are limited to one per course. Reserve your place by December 8, or book a call with our team if you'd like to talk it through first.
What is the NextGen bar exam?
The NextGen bar exam is the new bar exam from the National Conference of Bar Examiners. It started in July 2026. It tests what the law says and how well new lawyers can do the job. Most US states plan to use it by July 2028.
What people skills does the NextGen bar exam test?
It tests three skills about working with clients. They are client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management. It also tests research, writing, issue spotting, and finding the facts.
Will AI replace lawyers?
AI can help lawyers write drafts and find information faster. Clients still need a person they can trust. A lawyer has to listen well and give honest advice. That part of the job stays with people.
How can law students practice talking to clients?
Students can practice in clinics and skills classes, and with actors who play clients. They can also practice with AI clients. AI clients let students try many times and get feedback right away.
American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. (2024). Formal Opinion 512: Generative artificial intelligence tools. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/professional_responsibility/ethics-opinions/aba-formal-opinion-512.pdf
American Bar Association, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. (2025). ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, Standards 302 and 303. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/standards/
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NCBE Testing Task Force. (2020). Phase 2 Report: The 2019 Practice Analysis. https://nextgenbarexam.ncbex.org/reports/phase-2-report/
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