Graduating law school at peak of last recession - worst employment prospects in generations, not even close to top of class, only had one summer's worth experie

Graduating law school at peak of last recession - worst employment prospects in generations, not even close to top of class, only had one summer's worth experience with public sector (1 month each w/ state DOJ and legislature). Spent last year in school designing something akin to Casetext, then they came out of Summer '13 batch while I was studying for the bar. Decided to cheer them on rather than continue to build my application since I just recently began self-teaching JS (they're currently like 85/90% parity with my idea, was closer to 60% when they first came out - go Casetext!) Joined up with AmeriCorps for 12k/year providing free legal assistance to homeless/disabled vets (VA bens, discharge upgrades, clearing criminal records). Had applied to legislature job paying 60k. Fell in love with my vet work. Legislature job calls me up 4 months later into my AmeriCorps service to interview (I'm 90% sure I had this in the bag based on the previous summer's final evaluation). Turned down interview, stuck it out with low pay for another 6 months and then got hired on for (still lower than Legislature) salaried position. 1.5 years later - for my org, I'm in charge of all vet work for the whole state (4th largest vet population in US), I supervise the veteran law program at a top 15 lawschool. I'm "unofficially" in charge of whole state bar association of vet law attorneys (we just recently formed as an entity with 100+ members). I get to work my own hours, I get to choose my own cases. I didn't even know this was an area of the law I could make a career out of - not a vet myself. Job satisfaction > pay (plus it'll come in due time)