In fact, I just appealled a case wit the same issue except the documentation was poor and the person seeking the reduction returned to school to seek a career change. As a result, the court ruled that her job search was a pretense only since she was going from a law related job to school teaching.
In that case, she was in charge of a corporate litigation departmenst as a non-lawyer and with no formal legal training. The coproration restructured and he job was filled by a lawyer. Our argument was that she was exceeding her job skills in the former position and there was no realistic likelihood of finding a similar job since most were filled by lawyter. The case is hurt by the fact that she did not look for a job very actively until her severalnce expired almost 6 months later and, at that time, she had already enrolled in school.