Yes, of course, there's a catch: You have to use it to plan a community-service project for students at your law school to perform. The Law Student Division has a limited amount of funds available to help law schools and law students help their communities. It's called the Outreach Assistance Initiative program, or OAI. The idea is to enhance the image of the legal profession by promoting public service activities and providing law students with opportunities to make a difference.

OAI has a financial side and an informational side. First, it gives law student groups grants of $50 to $500 as seed money to organize public-service programs. Second, its programming manual offers step-by-step guidance to help organize and run several popular projects.

Jennifer Bayer, the Law Student Division's immediate past secretary-treasurer, says that although OAI funds are for "projects where people actually go out into the community and roll up their sleeves and do good work for the day," law students were not utilizing the resource. Until last year, that is. Last year, for the first time, the division distributed the entire OAI budget to nine worthy projects nationwide. The division has set aside $4,000 for OAI grants in the 1998-99 school year.

An OAI project doesn't necessarily have to be law-related, just community service-related. Last year, for example, OAI funds went to schools like the University of Miami School of Law, which received a $500 grant for a project at Miami's Barnyard Community Center, a children's center. More than 250 law students turned out to paint, repair picnic tables, install basketball hoops and perform other general maintenance tasks. The students also put on a series of programs for the children to keep them entertained, amused and, most importantly, off the playground so the repairs could be completed.

The Outreach Assistance Initiative was created during the 1988-89 school year to help promote public interest and community service work. OAI funds may be used to cover the costs of photocopying, telephone calls and other incidental expenses; they may not be used to pay for alcohol or snacks for volunteers. Bayer says the money is not intended to benefit law students directly, but to benefit a law school's community. One other caveat: OAI funds may not be used for professional-development programs.

Recipients of OAI grants are asked to write a "midway" report as well as a final report once a project is complete. And the creator of a particularly innovative program may be asked to write a new chapter for the OAI manual, instructing other law students how to repeat the proj-ect in the future.

The OAI manual is an important part of the program. In addition to an application form and instructions, the manual includes chapters that outline how to organize and carry out such popular projects as the "Law Students for Literacy" project, a project that provides legal assistance to domestic violence victims and a project in which law students help build homes with Habitat for Humanity. These outlines include step-by-step directions, suggestions on how to publicize the event, sample fliers, announcements, press releases and other helpful information. Even a law student could follow these directions!

Interested? Check with your ABA/LSD school representative or student bar association president, because they should have received an OAI manual at the Law Student Division's Annual Meeting in August. Or call the division's staff offices in Chicago at 312/988-5624. But hurry—OAI funds are awarded to worthy projects on a first-come, first-served basis.

Lee Farbman