The small group of Chrysler LLC lenders that balked at the Obama administration`s plan to sell the automaker will continue with its efforts opposing the deal, despite being starkly reduced in number this week, the group`s lawyer said on Thursday. The group which calls themselves the Chrysler "Non-TARP" lenders holds about $295 million in senior debt in the automaker, but the attorney representing the group said on Thursday that many more lenders are quietly behind their efforts to prove that Chrysler`s sale proposal violates time-honored bankruptcy laws. "We know a lot of people are in the foxhole behind us, so we`re going forward," Tom Lauria, a lawyer at White & Case who represents the group, said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. The dissenting group once included as many as 24 of Chrysler`s 46 senior lenders, Lauria said, but some have changed their stance as political pressure weighed on the company, and still others dropped out this week after a U.S. bankruptcy judge forced them to disclose their identity publicly. "There are some people who have big positions, that are kind of quietly supportive," Lauria said. "The people we are in communication with at this point hold approximately $2 billion," of Chrysler`s $6.9 billion in senior debt, he continued. The official members of the group disclosed this week include Schultze Master Fund, Stairway Capital Management, Group G Partners, Oppenheimer Master Loan Fund, and Foxhill Opportunity Master Fund, LP. They say they differ from big bank lenders like JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc because they have not taken any bailout money from the government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Some members withdrew from the dissenting group, as they were worried about their professional reputations and safety, among other concerns, Lauria said. WHAT`S IN THE PLAN Lauria said his clients are not against Chrysler`s restructuring effort, but rather against the way ownership of the new Chrysler is being divided up among the company`s union, Italy`s Fiat and the U.S. government. While the government, Fiat and the unions are getting ownership of the new company, the senior lenders have only been offered 29 cents on the dollar, which Lauria says goes against the typical priority scheme in the bankruptcy code, where senior lenders usually recover the most. "You can`t get around the law by creating a creative structure," Lauria said, saying that his group would argue Chrysler`s plan to sell itself to the new company in 30 to 60 days violates the bankruptcy code by creating a Chapter 11 reorganization plan outside of the bankruptcy process. "The law is you cannot reorganize a company that`s in Chapter 11 outside of a Chapter 11 plan," Lauria said. "A rose by any other name is still a rose," Lauria said. If the plan was put to a vote of creditors as part of a bankruptcy reorganization plan it might not pass as it stands now, according to Lauria. In typical reorganization plans a class of creditors is said to vote in favor of the plan if one half of the members of the class and holders of two-thirds of the amount of debt in that class vote in favor of the plan.