The American Bar Association's Young Lawyers group is reaching out to the HIV/AIDS community with its annual public service project.

After a few years of doing projects to aid children, this year the group is asking young lawyers to help to people of all ages living with AIDS and HIV. The group created Continuing Legal Education curriculum (available online through the ABA Web site) on how to give HIV/AIDS patients a "legal checkup." The program educates attorneys about the disease and the legal issues people with HIV/AIDS face including employment discrimination, rejection by health care providers, housing discrimination and bankruptcy issues and how to incorporate all the pertinent legal issues into a "checkup."

The curriculum is designed not only to prepare attorneys for counseling clients with HIV/AIDS, but also to encourage them to volunteer or offer free legal services to HIV/AIDS patients or health care and testing providers.

"There's really a great deal of education that needs to happen," said Seth Levy, service coordinator for the ABA Young Lawyers. "We took a two-pronged approach to this project. Half is an educational component where we try to educate lawyers about the disease and the legal implication and the law. ¦ The other side of that is 'OK we're educated, now let's go out and do something.' We wanted to cast that net as wide as possible. We want to promote straight up the middle pro bono type of work. But there are some lawyers who can't or don't want to do that. So we wanted to encourage people to pick up the phone and call the local AIDS services provider. If they need someone to paint the lunchroom, get a bunch of people together and paint the lunchroom."

The issue is particularly important in Nevada, where the population is disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Nevada has a higher rate of HIV/AIDS than the national average and ranks 14th in the nation in number of HIV/AIDS cases. Clark County has by far the highest rate in the state with 24.5 HIV/AIDS infections per 100,000 people.

Clark County Legal Services offers free legal counsel to HIV/AIDS patients, but it doesn't cover everything. For example, the group doesn't do legal work on employment issues. It's also not available to everyone. While the virus cuts across all social and economic spectrums, only poor residents are qualified to use CCLS services. That means an increasing number of attorneys in a range of practices will likely see legal issues concerning HIV/AIDS. They need to know what legal issues to expect and how to deal with them.

No word yet on whether the State Bar of Nevada's branch of Young Lawyers will take on a local AIDS project. The committee chair was unavailable for comment, but Levy said most state groups are just starting to discuss their public service plans for the year so it could be a while before any local projects come to fruition.