Luray’s Shanks seeks VSB presidency « Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Luray’s Shanks seeks VSB presidency

By Alan Cooper
Published: July 13, 2009

Luray lawyer George W. Shanks is a candidate for president-elect designate of the Virginia State Bar, an unwieldy title that would put him in line to be president of the agency in 2011-12.

He is the only candidate so far and may well be the only one. Eligibility for the position requires a candidate to have been a member of the VSB Council for two of the previous five years and to submit a petition with the names of 50 attorneys by Oct. 1.
If more than one candidate files a petition, an election will be conducted by a ballot mailed to VSB members by Nov. 5.

Shanks, 64, joined the six-lawyer firm of Miller, Earle & Shanks PLLC in 2006 after spending 25 of the previous 30 years as a solo practitioner.

He is the commissioner of accounts and the county attorney for Page County, but he spent most of his legal career in general practice. Over the years, “I started shedding areas of practice in which I realized I was a danger to myself and others,” so that most of his practice now is limited to personal injury cases and to his duties as commissioner of accounts and county attorney.

Shanks has been active in VSB matters for more than 20 years. He represents the 26th Circuit on VSB Council and is a member of its executive committee.

His first major project was membership on the VSB-Virginia Bar Association Joint Committee on Substance Abuse, the forerunner of the Lawyers Helping Lawyers program.

He left that project in 1989, when he became a member of the 7th District Disciplinary Committee but returned in 2006 as a member of the LHL board.

He said a speech by retired Virginia Chief Justice Harry L. Carrico led to his involvement with a Page County Bar Association’s program in public schools there.

Shanks said he took seriously Carrico’s suggestion that lawyers should be adjunct professors of law at public schools. His efforts in that regard led to his being named as the 2002 Local Bar Leader of the Year and chairman of the Conference of Local Bar Associations in 2006-2007.

That post put him on VSB Council and on its executive committee, as did the presidency of the Senior Lawyers Conference in 2007-08.

Shanks was born in Wilmington, Del., and graduated from Indiana University and the Temple University law school.

He began his legal career in Winchester in 1970 as an associate in the two-lawyer firm of Larrick & White. He interrupted his legal career in 1972 to work for five years as a legislative aide for U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr., which he calls “the best job I ever had.”
But “my kids were growing up without me,” so he opened an office in a converted garage next to his home in Page County.

The first month, he grossed $60 and wondered, “What have I done to my family?” He recalled that the doubt was especially intense on the fifth and twentieth of the month, the days he had received his federal paycheck.

His practice prospered over the years, however, and he says he is pleased to be largely free of the office management tasks since joining Miller, Earle & Shanks.

Shanks remarried recently, and he and his wife, Janice, have nine children and 10 grandchildren between them.

He said his work with the VSB has provided the opportunity “to rub elbows with absolutely fascinating people” who are “committed not only to their profession but to their communities.”

Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Luray’s Shanks seeks VSB presidency

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