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Your firm wants to get away paying you as little as possible. It wants you to have lesser distractions, options and personal life.
If your Partner/ colleague is a mediocre lawyer for whom 5 years of law education was a "vacation", excuse them for thinking that a Post Graduate education at a significantly MORE professional foreign university is also a "vacation". As per them, there's a HUGE difference between an NLU and a TLC, but NONE between a sub-standard NLU and Harvard/ Oxford/ Yale/ Cambridge/ Stanford!
Your Partner/ colleague is not invested in your growth. Your firm only wants your continued availability to bill. They have other LLM qualified lawyers they are hiring already. They will do what they can to discourage you from broadening your horizon. Your LLM from a foreign university may look attractive to your firm or clients. An insecure Partner may not be very pleased to look less-qualified than you.
The same short-sighted Partners who discourage further education hoot horns about "knowledge sharing sessions" and "secondments" that have any element of business development. Nor would countless Partners or colleagues admit that they applied or desired to apply for LLMs but either did not get good enough colleges or were afraid to look outside their tiny comfort zone.
There are obvious and latent career benefits from an LLM. You're asking the wrong crowd on this forum (non-LLMs).
YES. I returned to a higher pay-package. My LLM degree has helped my career.
Why would you care about whether your firm encourages you? Don't.