He was admitted to at least the Virginia bar in 1797. Wellsburg was the county seat of Brooke County, Virginia (now West Virginia), and as a frontier lawyer, Doddridge also practiced in nearby counties of Pennsylvania, and Ohio specializing in land disputes common in his day. West Virginia founder Waitman T. Willey read law under Doddridge. Another of his students served as a Judge of the Missouri Supreme Court – Silas Bent Jr., father of William Bent and Charles Bent, the trader and first territorial Governor of New Mexico during the Mexican-American War
