Although he is devoted to his work, Nesson has had opportunities to work on other issues drawing national attention. In 1970 he worked on the appeal of contempt citations in the Chicago Seven cases, and was also successful in acquiring a parole for Daniel Berrigan, who had been imprisoned for burning draft records at Catonsville, Md.

Shortly after the dismissal of the Ellsberg case, attorneys representing former vice-president Spiro T. Agnew asked Nesson for copies of motions he had filed in an attempt to bar a Boston grand jury from investigating the leaking of the Pentagon papers to the press, in order to bar a Baltimore grand jury investigation of Agnew's financial affairs.

Being so active would seemingly leave little time for his personal life, and Nesson concedes that his time is, for the most part, taken.

"My wife Fern believes I have a responsibility to her as much as to clients," Nesson says, and in 1974 Nesson took a leave to join his wife working as a public defender on the Massachusetts Defenders' Committee.

Nesson also recently procured a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (for an amount he will not reveal) to make ten films for teaching evidence to lawyers, which will involve filming prominent lawyers in their trials, some to be done in the Boston area and some not.

But Nesson, probably because of his modest manner, remains unknown to many undergraduates and even law students here. The defender of Ellsberg and Edelin, the prosecutor of the Ku Klux Klan, the battler against wiretapping plays it quiet and close to his chest. "I prefer," he says, "to remain out of the public eye."