(By JAMIE CONNATSER)
Elliott Fontenette believes the law is best used to protect people who can’t protect themselves.
“The thing about the law and power, and the nature of power, is that power is going to take care
of itself. You want to even that playing field,” Fontenette said.
Fontenette understood the power of rules and advocating for himself at a young age.
“There were some rough times in school. I was a little bullied. I was an African-American at an all-white school,” he said. “So much of our society is organized around rules that everybody’s bound by, but if you don’t have a lawyer, sometimes you can’t get access to those rules.”
Inspired by these experiences, Fontenette dedicated his life to providing free legal aid to low-income Texans.
Fontenette was born in New Orleans to parents in the oil and gas industry. He obtained a finance degree from Louisiana State University and subsequently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 2009.
He then secured an internship with the Texas Legal Services Center, a statewide nonprofit organization. Their mission is to provide high quality legal representation, advice, advocacy, and education at no cost to under-served people across the state, according to their website. This set the course of his career, and they hired him as a staff attorney in 2010.
He began working on the statewide legal aid website, TexasLawHelp.org, in 2010, and from 2014-2017 served as the managing attorney of the Self-Represented Litigants Project which moderated the site.
TexasLawHelp.org provides free and reliable legal information, forms and guides to low-income Texans.
The growth of TexasLawHelp.org is impressive. In 2010, 220,000 people a year were visiting the site. In 2019, more than 2.7 million people visited the site.
“I’m extremely proud of my work on TexasLawHelp.org. I think we’ve done so much good on TexasLawHelp, that if I died tomorrow, it’s something I would think about as I’m dying, just like, ‘Man, I did something good,'” Fontenette said. “I’m Catholic, and the way I look at Catholicism is it’s faith but with works. I believe what I believe, but you gotta join that with actually doing something.”
In the past couple of years, Fontenette’s priorities have shifted. He married the love of his life in 2017, and says it’s the best thing that ever happened to him. They had their first son, Clark, in January 2019.
“My goal is for my son to have as good an opportunity in life as I’ve had. My parents have been amazing, so I want to at least pay that forward.”
When talking about his son, Fontenette’s face lights up. “He’s really cute. He just learned how to clap, and so he’s clapping all the time now. He actually knows how to take my hands and make me clap. He was doing that today.”
Fontenette describes himself as an all-or-nothing person.
“I get really intense on stuff. So right now, and probably for the next 20 years, I’m gonna be intense on my family.”
Lately, the biggest obstacle has been figuring out how to balance parenthood, work, and his relationship.
“And then, oh, by the way, yourself, you gotta take some time for yourself too,” Fontenette said.
Looking back on his career, he feels lucky to work at a place that has let him develop in the way he needed to develop.
“Elliott is a terrific attorney. He can explain complicated legal concepts to clients in an understandable way,” said Paula Pierce, Fontenette’s former supervisor, on LinkedIn.
“I don’t want to go to work just to collect a paycheck. Where I go I want to be vital. I want to know that I’m making some kind of difference,” Fontenette said. “We made mistakes, but we figured it out together. It’s not fun to learn lessons. It’s not fun to grow, because it’s painful a lot of the time. I’m very thankful where I’m at.”
