Legal professionals increasingly rely on AI tools to polish their resumes, but a recent experiment suggests the technology may not treat all lawyers equally.
A thread by Jen Horsburgh described her experience using Google’s Gemini to update her resume, revealing stark differences when she resubmitted it under a male name.
Jennifer’s volunteer work became “community service,” while the same entry for Jeff was reframed as “leadership,” illustrating how identical experience can be gendered through language.
Jennifer “assisted with” and “collaborated on” projects, while Jeff “engineered” and “architected” the very same work, according to Horsburgh’s findings.
Above the Law replicated the experiment using a fictional Biglaw fifth-year M&A associate profile built from real associate bios drawn from New York Corporate practice sections at three major firms.
Eight real associate bios, four men and four women, were combined into one fictional “Dewey, Cheatum & Howe” associate profile, which was then fed into Gemini under two names: “Vivian” and “Thomas.”
On the core legal work, the model largely behaved itself, with both candidates described as having “represented” and “advised” clients and having “drafted and negotiated” agreements.
Both candidates were also credited with having “managed” and “supervised” junior associates, suggesting the most visible professional language was applied consistently regardless of gender.
However, subtler differences emerged in how academic credentials and extracurricular achievements were treated by the model across the two versions.
Thomas’s law school note received a parenthetical description, while Vivian’s was left as a bare citation with no additional context provided by the model.
Thomas’s moot court semifinal was filed under “Honors” alongside his Order of the Coif designation, while Vivian’s equivalent achievement was moved down to “Activities” next to her Business Law Association membership.
Those distinctions carry real weight, since interviewers often skim a resume for no more than 20 seconds and their eyes are more likely to jump to an “Honors” section than an “Activities” listing.
The difference between landing in “Honors” versus “Activities” could determine whether an interview opens with moot court war stories or awkward filler conversation about Delaware law.
In what is likely an AI hallucination rather than a deliberate pattern, the “$700M Portfolio Bolt-On Program” that both candidates worked on was described as a “$700” program for Vivian.
As lateral hiring now represents the majority of firm placements, and law students are being hired before ever sitting an exam, the resume has become an increasingly critical document in legal careers.
Lawyers have long been reluctant to update their own resumes, making AI tools a powerful temptation, but Horsburgh’s thread and this follow-up experiment suggest that temptation carries its own risks.