New Mexico Hispanic Bar Association Awarded LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® Legal Fellowship

Funds Will Be Used to Subsidize Costs of 2006 "Law Camp" Program for Junior High Students Across State of New Mexico

New Providence, N.J. - February 9, 2006 - The New Mexico Hispanic Bar Association (NMHBA), a non-profit organization that has been promoting opportunities in the legal profession for Hispanics since 1976, has been awarded the second LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Legal Fellowship, a program kicked off last year to promote education, the practice of public interest law and diversity in the legal profession.

The $15,000 fellowship will be awarded to the NMHBA in order to implement an innovative law camp for middle school students who are residents of New Mexico. The camp will include approximately 35 seventh and eighth grade students who come from economically challenged and/or minority backgrounds.

During the week-long program, the students will meet with judges, practicing attorneys and law enforcement officers, and they will also visit the federal and state courthouses in Albuquerque. The program will culminate with the students participating in a mock trial.

"The number of Hispanic attorneys practicing law in New Mexico is considerably under-representative of the state's Hispanic population, with just 17 percent of attorneys self-identified as Hispanic in a state with a 42 percent Hispanic population," said Rosalie Fragoso, a New Mexico attorney and president of the NMHBA. "Our goal with this program is to introduce students to the legal profession and to help them walk away with the conviction that a college education and legal career are both viable options for their futures."

The LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Legal Fellowship awards two $15,000 grants each year - one in the summer and one in the winter - to individuals or associations whose applications are selected by the company's Legal Fellowship committee. The deadline for the next fellowship is June 30, 2006, with the winner to be announced by the end of July. For more information or to complete and submit the application for a fellowship grant, please go to www.martindale.com/ratings and click on the "Legal Fellowship" icon.

About LexisNexis®
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of information and services solutions, including its flagship Web-based Lexis® and Nexis® research services, to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in 100 countries with 13,000 employees worldwide.