(Continued from Page 11) heavy traffic and the pressure

(Continued from Page 11)

heavy traffic and the pressure of practicing law in a big city. Biddle finally decided to move here when he realized that 96 percent of his work was done through the mail and on the telephone. “I can do all that in Rappahannock,” he thought. So he moved.

Biddle likes knowing all the lawyers in the county. “It’s a lot different dealing with lawyers here than in the city,” he says. “Here a lawyer’s word is his bond. In the city, you had better get a lawyer's word in writing.”

Biddle says the lawyers in Rappahannock work as a unit. "There is more comradary than competition because a law practice here is far more informal than in the dty. We deal with each other on a personal basis and that makes it easier to settle cases.” Biddle says that lawyers in the county spend as much tune keeping cases out of court as they do keeping them in.

How do lawyers get a bad name? Biddle says it is often because people underestimate a lawyer’s workload. “When most people go to see a lawyer they think theirs is the only case. Then they wonder why it takes so long.” To dispel the myth that lawyers have little work to do, Biddle pointed to a cabinet full of pending cases.

According to Biddle, a lawyer is a salesman who sells a point of view. His main concern in taking a case* is not whether he can “get his client off” but whether he can “adequately represent him.” Biddle points out that he can represent a guilty person and not lose sight of justice. He says there is always room to do what is right and conscionable.

The only female lawyer in the county, Sharon Luke, grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. She graduated in 1976 from the Columbia School of Law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. That year, three days after passing the bar exam, Luke (formerly Genebach) opened a law office in Rappahannock County.

She first became interested in law when a good firiend encouraged her to