Many years ago, after a long term relationship I'd been in started heading south, I came to the conclusion that I needed some good advice because whatever I was doing simply wasn't working. But to whom do you turn when you need some good advice? For whatever foolish reason, I decided that the best people to get advice from would be... people who had experience with making long term relationships work.

That ruled out taking advice from the likes of John "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and Psychobabble is from Uranus" Gray. True, his specials on PBS or cable or whatever were entertaining, and from interviews I've heard, he sounds like a smart enough fellow. He's also been divorced (from another alleged relationship guru, no less) and spent almost a decade as a celibate monk (his term, not mine) for the Maharishi Yogi Bear guy (you know; the alleged spiritual guru who snookered the Beatles, etc.). John Gray may be a fascinating conversationalist, but I just don't think I'd be looking for relationship advice from him.

[While tooling around the Internet to fact-check today's brief missive, I came across an assessment that I rather liked. The writer panned his books, but recommended an interview with him that Tony Robbins had recorded. "Just two guys talking," was the way she described it, and she said it was much more worthwhile. Having heard the interview, I'm inclined to agree.]

Instead, I ended up taking the advice of people who had demonstrated more success (and less tendency toward cults), and because I successfully pulled that relationship out of its tailspin (at least for the most part), the experience reinforced my tendency toward choosiness in where I go to find good advice.

As circumstances would have it, I am aware of at least three friends of mine who are currently going through a divorce. As I recently had lunch with one such friend, I found myself constantly starting to say something and then stopping. I am *extremely* unqualified to utter anything that would count as advice to my friends who are going through this, because I have no personal experience whatsoever with divorce.

[Well, except for one thing: I am expertly qualified to give advice on password security issues because of the nature of my day job, and it seems to me that anyone getting a divorce is well advised to be aware of certain password security issues that make them potentially vulnerable to their future ex-spouses... but more on that in a future post.]

So instead, I offer my friend what little support I can, and I ask the same questions that I'm sure they have been asked a dozen times before. How does one go about finding a lawyer to represent you? How does one know if the lawyer is a good one, etc.?

But it occurred to me later: if you want to make sure you're getting good divorce advice, should your lawyer be divorced, him/herself?