"I was only referring to making up scenarios and stuff for the actual written application questions, which everybody does"
I am really not sure this is true. There's also a difference between a candidate saying:
1) I am really excited in X practice area that X firm specialises in because I enjoyed this module on my LLB (spoiler: the student did not enjoy the subject); and
2) I completed a course on X that has prepared me* for X specialism in your firm (spoiler: no such course exists and the student has not done it).
OR
1) During my tenure as [amazing role at uni] my* comrades were having X problem and I did X amazing things to correct them that show I work with people well and will at X firm (spoiler: this never happened in that role, it was some wine drinking at some random talk); and
2) During my tenure as X... [spoiler: student has never had this role]
I think the two lies are not the same. One is 'playing the game' and getting through the application farce (which, yes, it is). And the other is misrep/fraud which will not get you very far in law and will get you struck off the register if you act without integrity. I think it's pretty fair, with that context, to say the career is probably one you should rethink (I am not saying you should but that is the backlash I believe you are referring to?).
About it being disingenuous - whatever the question is that appears in a law firm app - don't we all lie in law firms applications? Whatever the competency is we make up a scenario, why we are interested in the firm and especially why commercial law.
I agree in the sense that it is farcical to pretend these top 100 firms are truly different to one another in some marked way*; I have worked in 3 top 20 firms at this stage and can barely see the honest differences between them from a trainee's perspective. Prospective trainees are just trying to get their life in order, get their foot through the door, the idea that they all sat there and genuinely believe, "I want to work on commercial work in a legal context that is multi-jurisdictional and involves large transactions with smack dead insane clients" is a way of thinking no one in the history of time has started with but that is the application cycle and I would be careful of phrasing that as a lie on par with misrep.