Brandon M. Thompson would seem to be catnip to a big-league law firm: magna cum laude graduate of the University of Miami School of Law, law review editor-in-chief and a member of the national honor society Order of the Coif.

Yet when Thompson set out to secure a job before graduation in 2010, he wasn’t snapped up. Quite the contrary. For a time, he felt like the brass ring he’d worked so hard to grasp had been yanked inexplicably out of his reach.