Vinella Sido left her job as a corporate securities associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to follow her husband to Alabama for his job in September 2011. But despite more than 16 years of experience as an in-house lawyer and an associate at big firms, she was offered only temporary contract work when she returned to California last fall.

“I had tried going through recruiters and legal job ads, but with ads I hardly ever got responses,” she says.