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bonne foi
good faith. always.
An access-to-justice nonprofit, 501(c)(3) status planned
bonnefoi.org · June 2026
Founding advisory council brief

The bridge between the people who need a lawyer and the lawyers who could actually help them.

Four platforms now help self-represented litigants organize documents and draft filings. None of them help a person figure out whether they even need an attorney, find the right one based on real case history, reach that attorney with a pitch worth answering, and carry the work from one rejection to the next. The preparation lane stopped at the packet. Bonne Foi is the bridge.

92%
of low-income Americans' substantial civil legal problems get no or inadequate help
49%
of people who seek help from LSC-funded legal aid are turned away for lack of resources, unchanged since 2005
90%
of landlords in eviction cases have a lawyer. Only 10% of tenants do

What we build

Five things the preparation tools do not, built to route rather than rebuild:

  • Honest triage to attorney, pro se, limited scope, or legal aid, even when that means routing away from us.
  • A party mapper formatted for an ABA conflicts check in minutes, not a thirty-minute call.
  • An attorney finder matched on real public case history and language.
  • An outreach drafter the user cannot send until they personalize it.
  • A tracker with a portable summary that ends the re-explanation tax.

Why only a nonprofit

A paying company cannot tell a paying user "you don't need us, go use this other product." We can, because the mission is the person's outcome, not our revenue. That same honesty is why clinics, legal aid offices, and the access-to-justice programs Anthropic backs can stand behind a named nonprofit. It is a structural advantage, not a slogan.

The ask

Join the founding advisory council

A few hours a quarter. An enormous change in every conversation that follows.

We are assembling three to five founding advisors: a litigation pro bono leader, a legal aid director, a clinical professor, an access-to-justice figure, and an ethics expert.

With one founding name attached, every later conversation shifts from "I have an idea" to "we have institutional backing." No financial commitment is required.

Phase 1: a working bridge in twelve weeks, $250K to $400K, funded by access-to-justice grants and aligned donors.
Built, not theoretical

A working interactive prototype and a live product walkthrough exist today. This is a build in motion, not a pitch.

Ecosystem fit

Designed as the missing triage and outreach connector for Claude for Legal. Routes to Courtroom5, Prosei, and legal aid.

Regulator aware

A bar-ethics opinion gates outreach in week one. Public case data only. The client always initiates and personalizes.

Sources. 92% and turn-away rate: Legal Services Corporation, 2022 Justice Gap Study (justicegap.lsc.gov). Eviction representation: Center for American Progress (2019), citing national eviction data. Figures on pro bono intake time are program estimates discussed in the full business plan.
good faith. always.
Pree Walia, Founder · bonnefoi.org
To learn more or join the council, let's talk.
bonne foi
good faith. always.
Page 2
The landscape, mapped

Why Pree Walia.

She is not a lawyer. She is an inventor who stumbled into this. A polymath born in New Orleans and raised across the Deep South, she began in politics and community organizing for the next generation and underserved communities. Founder and CEO of Preemadonna, creator of Nailbot. Lead inventor on 9+ utility patents across hardware, computer vision, and software. Cofounded Soorma Ventures. Entrepreneur-in-Residence at JumpStart. MBA from the University of Chicago Booth, BA from Northwestern. Former board member at MakerGirl. Prior training as a domestic violence counselor. When she hit a complex multi-party legal problem, she called firm after firm, got no calls back, and taught herself the law. The hailstorm has not let up: in the past eight months an eviction notice plus civil and corporate matters have converged in her own life. She runs at startup intensity and deliberately chose the nonprofit structure this problem requires, which is the whole reason the quadrant below stayed empty until now.

Where we sit in the field.

Two axes describe the legal-tech landscape today. The consumer-initiated infrastructure quadrant was not buildable before AI made the routing and translation tractable. Bonne Foi is the first thing in it.

Organization-initiated · Infrastructure
Case management and the new AI skill layer, where the work gets recorded after the client is already in the system.
LegalServer · Clio · Claude for Legal · LawDroid
Consumer-initiated · Infrastructure
bonne foi
The upstream layer the field has been working around. The person opens the door. The matter feeds every system.
Organization-initiated · Service
Field-led civil legal aid. Excellent at what they do, scales with headcount inside a defined geography.
Legal Aid Society · Bet Tzedek · state LSC grantees
Consumer-initiated · Service
Prep tools and self-help apps. Help a person format what they already have a strategy for.
Courtroom5 · Prosei AI · Upsolve · EvenSteven

The empty quadrant was not buildable before AI made the routing and translation tractable. Upsolve proved a nonprofit can serve this side at scale, for a single form. Bonne Foi does it across every civil matter, and integrates into the systems that exist instead of rebuilding them. We are filling the quadrant.

Service organizations scale linearly with headcount in a defined geography. Bonne Foi scales as infrastructure: built once, compounded everywhere.
Pree Walia · pree@bonnefoi.org
Interactive preview: bonnefoi.org/demo
Diligence appendix available on request.