Duke Law Students Dedicate Both Time and Skills to Helping HIV-Positive Clients
by Erica Winter
Duke Law third-years Gretchen Bellamy and Jo Stein and second-year Emily Smith all work with the project this semester on the same types of cases on behalf of low-income HIV-positive clients. Their experience includes appeals of denials for Social Security disability benefits; setting up wills, health care powers of attorney, powers of attorney, and living wills; and sometimes representing a client in a discrimination case.
For some of the students, this is the first time they have worked on AIDS-related issues, while for others, this clinic is a continuation of past experience.
Before she came to law school, Bellamy was in the Peace Corps, managed a homeless shelter for five years, and also worked for the Red Hot record label, which donates all profits to AIDS charities around the world. While at Duke Law, Bellamy worked and studied in Zimbabwe and Kenya for eight months last year. She did an externship with the Children's Rights Project and studied comparative law. In Africa, Bellamy saw "HIV devastating a whole continent," she says.
In their work with the AIDS Legal Assistance Project at Duke, Bellamy and the other students see AIDS-related legal problems that are particular to the illness and also intertwined with the project's clients' poverty.
To receive disability benefits under Social Security, the disability must be demonstrated in medical records. The applicant fills out a form, Bellamy explains, and authorizes the Social Security Administration (SSA) to contact his/her doctors for documentation. One of the clients Bellamy is working with has memory loss—a common factor in AIDS—and had a hard time remembering all his physicians. The SSA denied his application for lack of documentation. Bellamy is working on his appeal.
The Duke project is showing Bellamy "the importance of having your affairs in order," she says, as well as teaching her the ins and outs of the Social Security system and its documents. She is also seeing again, as she did when managing the homeless shelter, the interconnections between AIDS, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and poverty.
After graduation, Bellamy will work with the private practice of a Duke professor.
For Duke Law student Stein, she came to the AIDS Legal Assistance Project as a "perfect follow-up" to her work with Duke's children's education law clinic. Seeing a variety of legal work, she also wanted to maintain contact with clients.
Stein's current work involves "a smorgasbord of cases," including a disability appeals case, two "documents cases" (wills and living wills), and a standby guardianship case. Some cases at the project are started by law students the semester or summer before and continued by the next group of students. Some can be completed in one semester—mostly documents cases. Stein's documents cases, however, are more complicated.
Drawing up a will for an HIV-positive client can be difficult, says Stein, because one must find the level of discussion at which the client is comfortable. It is hard to talk about death, especially with a terminally ill client. Some clients have thought about what they want to happen after they are gone before coming to the Duke clinic, but some have not. It is important "to be sensitive to what kind of client you're working with," says Stein.
Legally, however, there are no differences in drawing up a will for someone who is HIV-positive, nor does poverty make wills more complicated, says Stein, although the settlement process can be more complicated if there is extensive debt.
After graduation, Stein will clerk for one year for Judge Susan Black of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Jacksonville, FL.
Working in the AIDS Legal Assistance Project makes students appreciate public service legal work, says second-year Emily Smith, and "see how important it is to do." Smith is working on Social Security benefits appeals, wills, and one eviction case this semester. "I've gotten to meet a lot of really great clients," says Smith.
At the project, Smith has been able to see "how living in poverty and having an HIV diagnosis all comes together" to cause legal problems and unbalance life, she says. Her goal for project clients is "to give them a sense of security."
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