Since the Supreme Court ruling, most lawyers won’t even take age discrimination cases. In an effort to change that, a bill has been filed in the Senate each of the past several years, aimed at making it easier to bring a discrimination lawsuit.

The latest legislation has rare bipartisan support; Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are co-sponsors. “Older Americans have immense value to our society and our economy,” Mr. Grassley said in a recent news release. “They deserve the protections Congress originally intended.”

In the last Congress, along with the Democratic majority in the Senate, six Republicans backed the legislation, although two, both moderates, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, are no longer in the Senate. Cristina Martin-Firvida, a legislative specialist at AARP, says the bill has the votes to pass the Senate, but to have a chance at becoming law, more Republican senators would need to get behind it, which might then persuade the Republicans who control the House to take up the measure.

At the Ridgewood meeting, people discussed job-hunting strategies. Karen Clements, a paralegal, said she had four résumés ready to go, each emphasizing a different skill: bookkeeping, S.E.C. compliance, fraud investigation and intellectual property rights.

She described a friend who is dressed in business attire by 4 a.m. Mondays, so she’ll be ready the moment an opportunity is posted online. If the firm wants to do a Skype interview, said Ms. Clements, her friend is dressed for Skyping. “By Tuesday they’ll have 1,000 résumés and the window will be closed.”

“It’s like Wayne Gretzky says,” Ms. Braun told them: “You have to skate to where the puck will be.”

They discussed the importance of following up any contact with thank-you e-mails and handing out lots of business cards, though it’s tricky to identify yourself when you have no job. “Be careful of the title you give yourself — you don’t want to sound dated,” said Ms. Braun, whose business card reads, “Barbara J. Braun, principal, BarbaraJBraun LLC, Connect Goals to Extraordinary Outcomes.”

Several mentioned the importance of LinkedIn, the business networking site.

“You have to have at least 500 contacts,” said Lisa Sepetjian, who has been an accounts manager for banks and small-business lenders. “Any less shows you don’t care; you’re not in the game.”