"I guess students were surprised that [for] someone who was as liberal as he was, he was as tough as he was in the classroom," Kaufman said.

At HLS, Countryman taught courses in commercial law, commercial transactions, financial planning, creditors' rights and the legal profession.

Countryman, whose family later moved from family to Washington state, received both his undergraduate and his law degrees from the University of Washington.

Graduating from college in 1939, Countryman was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. In law school, he was president of the Washington Law Review editorial board.

In 1943, when having finished both his education and his clerkship, the young Countryman joined the Air Force, rising to the rank of First Lieutenant during the war. He served until 1946, stationed in the Mediterranean Theater in Italy during the later years of his service.

Countryman was married to the late Vera Pound, a relative of former HLS Dean Roscoe Pound, and is survived by three brothers, two daughters and two grandchildren.