BPP Career Development Consultant Tyler Austin talks about using AI, avoiding over-reliance, and showing recruiters the thinking behind your work
According to BPP Career Development Consultant Tyler Austin, aspiring lawyers thinking about how to use AI in their applications should start with one word: intentionality. Students should not panic about technology or rely on it blindly. In his view, what’s important is being able to explain exactly why you use it, where it’s useful, and what’s left for your work.
A career built around student employability shapes how Tyler thinks about all of this. After studying Law and Commerce at City University of London, she moved into a hybrid Employability and Students’ Union role at the City Students’ Union, before taking up a Careers Adviser post at York St John. He has now been with BPP for about two years, and his role on the Future Talent Development team is to help students figure out which practice areas and jobs they’re interested in, while also providing them with “the space and toolkit to approach recruitment with more confidence.”
When the conversation turns to AI, the practical fundamentals quickly come through. For Tyler, the real problem is not that these tools exist, but that some students are using them thoughtlessly. “If you don’t know why you’re using it or what you want to get out of a particular tool or prompt, you’re not in the right place to use the software,” he says. In other words, treating AI as a machine that gives instant answers misses the point. Instead, students should ask what parts of their answers are actually improved and whether that improvement remains authentic to them.
According to Tyler, copying and pasting from a chatbot is not considered good use. “The idea of copying and pasting what a large-scale language model tells you is one of the scariest things ever,” he says, warning that candidates “could end up with sophisticated-sounding content that misses the point they’re really trying to make.” A better approach, in his opinion, is to use “targeted prompts that generate criticism.” He suggests asking the tool to question its own output, or using it to explore why a particular question is important and how different perspectives fit together. Such interactions can produce something “much more subtle and powerful than just regurgitating what the tools tell us,” he says.
When asked whether law firms should simply allow the use of AI in their applications, Tyler is cautious. Rather than giving a simple yes or no answer, he frames the question as shaped by the market and what different companies are trying to offer their customers. Some companies have invested heavily in proprietary AI tools, making being tech savvy a real advantage for candidates. But there’s still a line to be drawn between candidates who say they use AI every day and those who can demonstrate they know how to leverage AI when appropriate. For Tyler, the real question is whether Candidate’s use of AI provides “cultural and practical benefits” to a particular company and its customers.
Things get even more interesting when companies use AI in recruiting themselves, which Tyler describes as a “huge challenge.” Recruiting teams are often small, and he sees the appeal of AI-assisted systems that allow them to review large volumes of applications more efficiently and, in some cases, more consistently. If companies are “saving resources in vetting candidates,” some of that saved time could be passed on to applicants in the form of better feedback and how to navigate these new tools, he suggests.
According to Tyler, finding applications built with AI is more difficult than most people imagine. Because it is often quite difficult to discover how best to use technology. “Appropriate use of AI is not the response itself, but an integrated element of the response,” he says. An even bigger problem is inappropriate usage, especially hallucinations. Misrepresenting what a company does, fabricating a conversation with someone there, or even getting the company name wrong can have understandably devastating consequences. More subtle cues include general, conceptual descriptions of the sector and a tone that feels pretentious. “AI loves to use buzzwords to elicit emotional responses,” Tyler noted, adding, “When you feel the emotion rather than see the evidence, that tone doesn’t sit well with you.”
Students worried about relying too much on AI have much the same advice from Tyler. Stop and ask what the tool is actually for. “When using a tool, always ask yourself: Why am I using it?” he says. Search engines may be better suited for simple fact-finding, but when your goal is to uncover angles you haven’t thought of or test your ideas, AI really comes into play. He also speaks warmly of using it as a “roleplay toolkit.” This is a way to rehearse how others will react in the context of an interview or application, since saying your ideas out loud, even to a machine, can expose weaknesses in your reasoning.
When asked what skills are most important for future trainees as AI becomes more integrated into the profession, Tyler divided his answer into practical and conceptual categories. On the practical side, they cite due diligence, careful handling of data, attention to detail, digital literacy, and the ability to spot mistakes and highlight risks. But conceptually, the skills he keeps coming back to are the very human things of empathy and connection. Building relationships and common ground remains important in a commercial environment, he argues, and equally important is accountability. Aspiring lawyers cannot treat the LLM as the “real truth” and themselves as mere mouthpieces. They must be able to justify their process, explain source material, and support their advice.
At the end of the day, at BPP, it’s all about helping students overcome their biases around AI and gain a more practical understanding of how AI fits into their professional lives. He is careful not to say that career development consultants “teach” AI, but they are holding workshops to share best practices, and academic and professional services teams are also receiving training on how to use it effectively. The aim is not to encourage students to outsource their thinking, but to help them use these tools in a way that is pragmatic, responsible and tailored to the workplace they are about to enter.
The conversation concluded with advice given to candidates applying for vacation schemes and training contracts, based on the first principle: Recruitment is about risk versus reward. The job, Tyler said, is to be “logically sound” to ensure the candidate is competent and a cultural fit, treat the process as an opportunity to share rather than just prove it, and be open about professional and non-professional experiences alike. In his words, “Whenever a tool reduces effort, there is a flipside cost.” For some candidates, that cost eliminates their ability to defend and explain their work under pressure.
Tyler Austin will be speaking at the virtual student event “How to use AI in training contract applications — with BPP” tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday, July 21st). Apply to join now.
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