Monday evening.

A solicitor prepares for tomorrow's hearing when the council will seek a care order over her client's child.

In the background another lawyer patiently explains an insurance policy over the phone.

A third is at a hospital bedside making a will for a client who may or may not last the night.Nothing unusual, you may think: but this is no ordinary practice.

These lawyers all work for the Terrence Higgins Trust.

The first is a member of staff, working full-time.

The second is a volunteer barrister, answering a call on what the trust calls 'legal line'.

The third, another solicitor, is also a volunteer, responding to a referral.

All their services are provided free to the client.

All their clients are in some way affected by HIV or AIDS.

They represent a possibly unique partnership between staff and volunteers.

In the context of the current discussion of pro bono work, they provide an example of the way individual voluntary contributions to legal advice can be brought within a structured framework, and of how specialist legal skills can be useful to ordinary people.The Terrence Higgins Trust is the UK's earliest, and now one of its biggest, AIDS charities.

It has some 60 staff and over 1350 volunteers.

Among many other services such as buddying (befriending for people with HIV), the helpline (which takes 25,000 calls a year) and counselling, it provides welfare rights, housing and legal advice.

The legal advice is provided by three staff so licitors (two full-time, one part-time) and some 65 volunteers, both solicitors and barristers.The staff solicitors operate the equivalent of a law centre for people affected by HIV and AIDS.

They deal with almost everything from custody battles to medical confidentiality.

The largest areas of advice and casework are wills, employment, immigration and insurance.

They also run outreach sessions at the Mildmay Mission Hospital and at another centre in Newham.The volunteers are a dedicated group of lawyers from all sorts of backgrounds, from big City firms to sole practitioners via publishing and the Bar.

All their services are provided in their own time and free of charge.

The volunteers staff a twice-weekly evening legal helpline called 'legal line' and an outreach session at an HIV drop-in centre in Camden; and they participate with staff members in another outreach session at the Kobler Centre in Fulham (one of the largest HIV clinics, part of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital).

They also take on voluntary referrals in fields in which they are competent.

These cover a wide range, but frequently this means making wills (we have completed over 160 wills for people with HIV in the last six months alone).

The trust's main helpline, open 365 days a year from 12 noon to 10pm, also has a list of legal volunteers who are prepared to be called upon outside office hours to make an emergency will for a client who is dying.Volunteers and staff are also involved in policy initiatives and publications.

Examples of these have been the development (in co-operation with the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at King's College, London) of a pioneering living will form, of which 30,000 copies have been distributed to date; and where appropriate challenging the insurance industry's practices in the area of HIV, as well as publishing leaflets on insurance and HIV and wills and power of attorney.The legal service offered by the trust is an integrated one with staff and volunteers co-operating at every level.

The trust strives to provide a service which is not only competent but which is also sympathetic to the particular needs of people affected by HIV and AIDS.

Those people may be reluctant to approach more obvious sources of legal advice such as citizens advice bureaux or solicitors in the high street.

This may be for fear of being received unsympathetically because of HIV status or lifestyle, fear of breach of confidence, or merely out of reluctance at having to explain all this to those who are ignorant of such matters.

At the trust, both staff and volunteers are very aware of the implications of being HIV positive or living with AIDS, and no client should find it necessary to explain them.The trust's unique structure of co-operation between staff and volunteers provides an interesting model for pro bono work by volunteer lawyers.

Although we do not, as yet, have formal commitments from firms of solicitors to provide services free of charge, many of the firms from which our volunteers come are well aware of the work they are doing and provide us with tacit (or in some cases overt) encouragement and support, and many of our volunteers who are barristers will undertake advocacy for no fee.

The next step, perhaps, is to obtain more overt support from those firms which are prepared to stand up and be counted.

But AIDS, unlike other conditions, may still suggest implications both for those who volunteer and for those who are affected; and some fear that those implications will be used in evidence against them.To date over one million people ha ve been diagnosed with AIDS worldwide.

In the USA, AIDS is one of the leading causes of death for men aged 25 to 44.

In this country, official statistics say that some 25,000 people have been infected with HIV, but the true total is probably much higher.

Some 11,000 have been diagnosed with AIDS and 7500 of them have died.Although HIV infection in this country is not increasing at the rate once feared, legal problems faced by people with HIV and AIDS are not diminishing, and another person is infected with HIV in this country every four to six hours.

We are not the only organisation providing legal services to those with HIV and AIDS, but we are proud of our commitment to those people and of the service we offer them.To contact the Terrence Higgins Trust phone the following numbers: advice centre 0171 831 0330 (during working hours); helpline 0171 242 1010 (12 noon to 10pm seven days a week); legal line 0171 405 2381 (7pm to 9pm Monday and Wednesday).