Mark Ashton - cheerful, thoughtful and widely respected - has for the last decade been one of the leading matrimonial attorneys in eastern Pennsylvania. Indeed, several peers and rivals regard Ashton as the "go-to-guy" for major divorce cases in Chester County. There's a James-Taylor-like warmth and earthiness about Ashton that's rare among top divorce lawyers, and in many respects Ashton himself is surprised by his chosen profession. "I never thought I'd be doing what I am today," says the Montgomery County native. He went off to George Washington University in Washington with an eye on becoming a diplomat, and his political interests sprouted early: He was involved in campus politics, but witnessed first-hand, in the years just after Watergate, Washington's emerging blood sport of personal destruction. Having witnessed rising political stars shot down over what seemed like trivial disputes Ashton decided to leave Washington and try his hand at the law. He went to law school in Chicago ("I like big cities, but it was too cold to stay") and I returned to clerk for Mason Avrigian, then on the bench of Montgomery County's Court of Common Pleas. He later worked for a Norristown firm handling insurance-defense cases, gaining trial experience early. Then, in the early 80s he joined the practice of the well-known divorce attorney Albert Momjian which plunged him into divorce law virtually full-time. ("When an opportunity comes you follow it," adding, "Al was an important early mentor.") By 1990, having built a solid reputation, he was recruited by a well-regarded Chester County attorney to create a Family Law Department in Chester County.