Mary Vidas has built one of the most impressive reputations of any matrimonial attorney in the region today - a distinction all the more remarkable considering her vast caseload and unflagging pace. Indeed, Vidas has long been in great demand, representing clients from Cape May, New Jersey, to Lancaster to Scranton, Pa., and seemingly everywhere in between. A tough and exacting litigator and a prodigious worker, Vidas spends most of her professional time fighting for clients before judges - in custody cases, support matters, and all manner of divorce proceedings. Admirers say this 50-year-old attorney's forceful personality took on, unflinchingly, the male-dominated world of trial law, all the while at Blank Rome, a 400-attorney firm where she could easily have been Mommy-tracked into obscurity. Growing up near Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Vidas had plenty of mentors, including her father, owner of the Acme Piano Co., a longtime fixture of Philadelphia commerce. She went to Georgetown, with an eye on entering the foreign service. She stayed in Washington, working two years at Georgetown's Foreign Service School, but later returned home for law school. Her Family Law professor was Norman Perlberger, who at the time was a partner in Blank Rome's matrimonial department; he spotted Vidas' skills and potential; she joined the fast-growing firm in 1981. Perlberger and partner Len Dubin threw Vidas "into the fire" of trial work - "It was, 'OK, you take the next witness, Mary,' and they left you there to do it.