Who Needs A Lawyer in Court Anyway? Part 3: Feeling Your Pain

Here are some questions you may want to ask a divorce or custody lawyer when you go shopping.  The reason for this first set of questions is to find out just how compassionate, flexible and wise your potential lawyer may be.

• Why do you practice family law?
• Is there some event in your own life that inspired you to do this kind of work?
• If so, what have you learned from that event? 

These questions matter because, like some psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, far too many divorce and family lawyers do the work as a reaction to some event in their own lives that wasn't resolved very well.  What you are looking for isn't the event, but how the event shaped this particular lawyer's life.

• Did it turn him or her into a crusader?  
• If so, after years of practice, has he or she come down off the soapbox, or is he or she still up there tilting at windmills?
• Does he or she recognize his or her own limitations?
• Can he or she admit it when he or she makes a mistake?
• If so, does he or she do everything possible to learn from, and correct the mistake?  
• Is this person one who dares greatly?

Sometimes the very best family lawyers are the ones who have had difficult experiences in their own lives with a divorce or custody case, but they are also the ones who have been able to learn from their own pain and become more balanced and compassionate.