BUFFALO, NY (Buffalo Business First) — Thomas Parsons has changed the direction of his career path multiple times. His advice? Trust your gut.
That instinct has led to the Illinois native bouncing around from studying biology in New York state to being a police officer in Nashville to eventually settling in Western New York. He graduated from the University at Buffalo law school this year and recently joined Tully Rinckey PLLC as an associate.
“I’ve always wanted to focus on careers where I can make a difference and I can help people,” Parsons said.
When Parsons was finishing high school at New Trier Township High School outside of Chicago and applying to college, he thought he would go into medicine, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, father and older brothers – all doctors.
Parsons got his biology degree at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, but while attending school there, he joined emergency medical service.
“I found I liked that side of things more than I liked the bio side of things,” he said. “After I finished school, my girlfriend and I moved down to Nashville where I became a police officer.”
After four years in Nashville, he and his now wife, a Lackawanna native, moved to Western New York because of her job. They settled in the Town of Tonawanda and had a daughter a few years ago.
After moving here in early 2022, Parsons was looking for law enforcement roles and applied to UB law school as “a long shot.” He said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do and UB had recently changed their law school policy to accept Graduate Record Examinations scores and not require Law School Admission Test scores.
“I had an old GRE score that was about to expire,” he said. “I applied not expecting much. I was pretty astounded that that happened.”
After he graduated, he was evaluating some job options and met a Tully Rinckey recruiter at a UB job fair. He discovered a new way to help people: federal employment law, which is his focus as an associate at the firm.
Now, he’s committed to staying in Buffalo for the foreseeable future and said he’d like to work his way up at Tully Rinckey to become a partner one day.
