In a large part it's volume of applications. E.g., I've got an application for Payne Hicks Beach to do, which I've not started, and which is due today, and I don't know anything about.
They ask for "600 word statement", via allhires. Filling in allhires takes about five minutes via copy-paste and MyLocker, and then I've got a bunch of previous statements that I can mine for a large part of the 600-word statement.
Then I'd go to their website, go to 'People', click on Partners, they've got 46, check what they do, ok "international arbitration", "high net worth", "international immigration", landed estates, etc. Check Legal 500, check Chambers, go through Chambers Student, Legal Cheek, looking for particular comments about the training process, build it into my answer.
Do a double check for grammar and spelling with ChatGPT and then submit.
I've in the past looked at applications on congrapps for law firms that (they say) have made it through to final stages, and I feel like most of them are pretty generic, in the sense that they could follow a similar copy-paste approach in terms of writing about themselves for multiple applications. But it's really hard to say - I don't know if the congrapps are genuinely good or not; IDK, I'm lazy and this approach kinda works for me in the eventually I reach a sufficient zen-like intersection of laziness and deadline-pressure getting me to vomit out sufficient applications to get to sufficient next stages to at some point get a TC.
Unfortunately I've not yet got beyond stage two to get somewhere, so my next master plan of laziness is to write a VI Windows app that spits random VI questions at me from a file, have it record my reply, feed the recorded video into chatgpt to transcribe, ask the AI to insult me sufficiently based on the transcription (and also review it myself), and then try and work on that to do better in interviews.
the most applications I ever did in one day was thirteen (on 31 January):
Curtis (still waiting, assume PFO)
Stevens & Bolton (partner interview - PFO)
DMH Stallard (still waiting)
Gateley (PFOed at stage two: post-VI)
Fox Williams (waiting following third-stage VI)
Ropes (PFOed)
Boodle Hatfield (PFOed)
Shoosmiths (PFOed probably based on SJT?)
Harbottle & Lewis (still waiting, I think PFO?)
Orrick (PFOed)
K&L Gates (PFOed)
Northridge (did the application but didn't realise it was noon cut-off, so didn't actually submit it)
Brown Rudnick (PFOed)