40 Lawyers Form Panel To Handle Draft Cases

About 40 lawyers from the Boston area met in a Law School building Wednesday night to create a special panel of attorneys willing to handle Selective Service court cases.

The meeting had been called by Vern Countryman, professor of Law, who wrote letters to lawyers in the area whom he knew were interested. The lawyers who attended the meeting at the International Legal Studies Building elected a temporary chairman, Edward Rudnitsky, and agreed to meet again next month.

Countryman explained that the new panel, as yet untitled, will serve two purposes:

*Give the local federal court a list of lawyers willing to defend Selective Service clients who are unable to pay. The Federal Criminal Justice Act of 1964 provides for such assistance, but the court now chooses from a list which does not necessarily include lawyers interested or experienced in draft work.

*Enable lawyers to pool their resources and experience in Selective Service cases.

Countryman said that San Francisco already has a panel of lawyers wiling to handle draft cases, and "I hope that other areas will start them."

The names of the Boston-area lawyers involved will not be released, Countryman said, because it is illegal and unethical for lawyers to advertise their services. He said, however, that local draft counseling service would know who was on the list.

Cambridge already has a Committee for Legal Research on the Draft, an organization based in Langdell Hall. (Many of the lawyers to whom Countryman wrote have been associated with CLRD. The Committee has been accumulating a library of Selective Service material.