White & Case M&A partner Ferdinand Mason, based in London, has called out students using AI to inflate their CVs after reviewing hundreds of them.

Mason, who doesn’t normally review CVs, offered to help struggling students on LinkedIn. What came back raised eyebrows.

“More than a few arrive with two full pages of M&A deals off the back of a few weeks on a vacation scheme. Reading the roles claimed, you do wonder how the firm managed to keep the lights on before they arrived.”

To drive the point home, he created Paul, 21, a fictional student who asked an LLM to “punch up” his CV after a four-week vac scheme. The result: £102bn of deals in a single July.

On one £40bn deal, Paul “[r]an signing and closing, supervised the partners and reassured the chairman. Asked for a bit more responsibility at his review.”

“By week five, presumably, Paul was considering opening in New York.”

Mason said he understands the pressure.

“Look, I know it is the Hunger Games out there. Still, please leave yourselves something left to achieve after qualification.”

Mason’s message: own the grunt work.

“If your vacation scheme actually involved legal research, checking definitions and sitting quietly on calls, put that down. That sounds rather more like reality, and there is plenty in there to talk about.”

Mason isn’t against AI, as long as students can back up what it writes.

“And please do use AI to tidy up your drafts. Just read the CV through before sending it, and ask yourself whether you could comfortably explain every claim across the interview table.”

Source: LinkedIn, Non-Billable