Bonne Foi gives purchase to people who have none.
We build infrastructure that connects people to the help they need when the systems around them were not built with them in mind. Every fight starts with an initial battle. Ours is legacy legal infrastructure, antiquated systems not suited to provide access to justice for underserved communities. But the fight does not end there. It may span into the water, the forests, inland into the heartland, and into the air above all of it, wherever we are called to defend the dignité (dignity) of those communities against whatever threatens it.
We triage honestly, match carefully, and carry every person's story forward until a door opens. We serve the person who needs a lawyer and the lawyer who needs a better way to help. We do not claim ownership of things that cannot be bought, and we do not pretend the system is simpler than it is. We just build the rigging so that a small crew can move what no one was meant to carry alone.
Our founder faces every fight the way she was raised on Friday nights in the Deep South: clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.*
Les yeux clairs, le cœur plein, on ne peut pas perdre.
* From the television series Friday Night Lights, one of the founder’s favorite lines.
Some things are in commerce. Purchase, the infrastructure we build, is one of them. We keep it within reach of anyone who needs it, and if it ever carries a price, that price is set in good faith.
Some things are not. Bonne foi (good faith) is a birthright in Louisiana, and we believe it belongs to everyone. Bon secours (the duty to aid) is a birth responsibility. Bonne grâce (the grace to treat every human being as though they already belong in the room) is both. These are hors commerce: outside of commerce, insusceptible of private ownership, the kind of thing that by its nature cannot be bought, sold, or traded. They are the principles we are named for, and they are not for sale.
Le dix-huitième état des États-Unis kept the code. We keep the faith. And we build purchase for everyone.
- generalGrip; the ability to hold on when the surface gives you nothing.
- nauticalMechanical advantage; a system of ropes and pulleys that lets a small crew move a weight greater than their own strength.
- legalAcquisition. The Louisiana Purchase, 1803. Fifteen million dollars for 828,000 square miles. Everything in commerce changed hands. Everything that was not did not.
- bonne foiThe infrastructure that gives a person a foothold in a system not built for them, and gives the lawyer who would help them the leverage to do it.
"We build purchase to keep it within reach. The principles are not for sale."
Why purchase. Because standing is a land word, and half this story is on the water. Purchase works on land (grip), on sea (mechanical advantage), and in law (the transaction that started it all). In French, the word is prise: grip, hold, capture, and also the electrical outlet that connects a person to the power grid. The founder's father built the electrical infrastructure of the Deep South. She builds a different kind of infrastructure for the same region. The word holds both.
The plates are patent-inspired. Our founder is a quirky inventor, and she drafted the law the way she dreams up machines. See every figure, and what each number means →
* On Hors commerce: “the land, taken before it was sold.” Even this bears examining. What entered commerce in 1803 was taken before it was sold. Some property is not innocent; we name it rather than pretend the ledger is clean.