"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." Niels Bohr

Clairvoyance is the ability to know things like the future through the use of your mind alone. Many bar review courses sell clairvoyance.  They claim that their panels of experts make useful predictions about what types of essay questions will appear on the next California Bar Examination, often based on what has (or has not) appeared on the Exam in the past.

Can you predict what will be on the Bar Exam?  For ten years I was the State Bar Executive responsible to put together the Exam ... and I don't think so!  But hey...why don't I just tell you how it was done.  Then you can evaluate the bar reviews' claims for yourself.

The Committee of Bar Examiners buys its essay questions from out of state law professors.  It keeps its question inventories in "banks" by subject matter. Members of the Committee's Examinations Development and Grading Team supervise the banks.

Each year Team members request questions on specific topics for their subject matter banks.  The Examinations Director relays the requests to the law professor suppliers.  However, the solicitation doesn't always produce the desired questions. Just as all law professors are not created equal, so do their question submissions vary in subject matter, quality and utility. Sometimes the banks are replenished to the Team's satisfaction; sometimes they're not.

Question selection for a specific bar examination starts when each Team member nominates one or more questions from his or her banks.  It's true that what has been tested in the past is taken into account. But what do you do if there are no good quality questions in topics that you've requested, topics that you believe should be tested next?  My experience was that the Team members then looked instead to the best quality questions in their banks to nominate, even if their subject matters had been recently tested. I agreed with that approach.

Question selection doesn't end there.  What follows is a long and thorough process that involves extensive discussion and debate at all levels: starting with the Team, and then with the Office of Admissions staff and finally, with the Committee of Bar Examiners. It includes seemingly endless edits to ensure that these high stakes questions are of consistently excellent quality.  If need be, questions can be replaced at any step in this process to further assure that kind of quality. 

To my mind, all of this is right and proper.  It's both anticipated by and allowed by the explicit Scope of the Examination.  All areas that fall within the Scope are fair game to be tested, and for good reason.  After all, once you pass the Exam and proceed to practice law for money, you'd better know what you're doing.