CHARITY WATCH : Lawyers for Soldiers

If you’re one of those Americans who went to bed one night as a butcher, baker or candlestick-maker and woke up a week later to find yourself back in uniform staring across the Arabian sands at Saddam Hussein’s army, the last thing you ought to have to worry about is unpaid parking tickets or broken apartment leases back home.

Or at least you won’t if Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gregory C. O’Brien’s has his way. O’Brien is a a legal idealist who believes that “most lawyers retain a strong belief in public service.”

It is that belief that O’Brien hopes to tap in his new campaign to provide free or low- cost legal services to military reservists called to active duty for service in the Persian Gulf.

Working after hours out of his Pomona chambers, O’Brien is contacting bar associations across the country and asking them to distribute a form on which their members can list their qualifications and the number of cases they are willing to handle for reservists on a pro bono, reduced-fee or deferred-payment basis.

As the completed forms are returned to him, O’Brien will compile them into a computerized list, which he will turn over to the judge advocate’s office.

His hope is that the judge advocate will make the list available to military personnel when civil or criminal legal problems arise.

It’s better than a good idea, it’s a practical one.

In this case, O’Brien’s judicial remedy is appropriate not only to the spirit of the season, but also to the challenge of the occasion.