Want to clear a criminal record? This lawyer has an app for that

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the a Journal Legal Rebels podcast where we talk to men and women who are remaking the legal profession, changing the way the law is practiced, and setting standards that will guide us into the future.

Matt Reynolds:

The impact for people clearing their criminal records can be life-changing, paving the way for long-term employment and a better life. It can also help prevent recidivism, but the path to expungement is not easy. The creators of an app called Rasa so they can help. Launched in 2022. In Utah, rasa says it can offer a quick and cheap solution for people trying to clear their criminal records. I’m Matt Reynolds, a legal affairs writer with the ABA Journal in Chicago, and I’m happy to welcome Rasa founder and lawyer, Noella Sudbury to the Legal Rebels podcast. Today we’re going to talk about her work, scaling up the process of clearing criminal records and some of the challenges she’s faced along the way. I’m Matt Reynolds, a legal affairs writer with the ABA Journal in Chicago. I’m happy to welcome Rasa founder and lawyer, Noella Sudbury to the Legal Rebels podcast today. Hi Noella, how are you doing?

Noella Sudbury:

I’m doing well. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Matt Reynolds:

Yeah, so I should just start by asking for people that might not know what Rasa does, could you just give us a kind of a quick kind of rundown of how the app works?

Noella Sudbury:

Sure, absolutely. So our mission at Rasa is to make the process of clearing a criminal record simple and affordable for everyone. If you have a criminal record, you’re not alone. The first thing I like to share is that having a criminal record is a lot more common than people think. One in three Americans have some type of misdemeanor or felony record, and people get trapped in that cycle. Records are not always centralized. The legal system is costly, it’s complicated, and for a lot of people they immediately feel overwhelmed and they give up. And so what Rasa does is use technology to bring information about that person’s records into their hands in under three minutes and allow them to engage with and connect with an affordable lawyer who can help them with the process if they’re eligible.

Matt Reynolds:

And can you tell me a little about your journey? Because it’s my understanding from talking to you before you were the first lawyer in your family. Is that right?

Noella Sudbury:

That’s correct. I grew up in Utah. My mother grew up in rural Utah. She was one of 10 children and really grew up in poverty, grew up with nothing. And I think as a little girl being around poverty made me feel really uncomfortable. And seeing just the poor quality of life of a lot of the members of my mother’s family made me curious about poverty and really want to do something to change the fact that a lot of people are born into that environment and have the decks stacked against them from the time of their birth. And so went to the University of Utah and was really inspired to go to law school from those early experiences as a way to hopefully use the law to change the world at scale and eliminate poverty for people who are struggling.

Matt Reynolds:

And what was the path that led you to working in the criminal justice space and then creating your own app?

Noella Sudbury:

So I went to the University of Utah for law school, graduated in 2009 and started my career as a baby lawyer, as a public defender. And from that experience, very quickly became passionate about criminal justice reform that many of my clients were struggling with poverty, with substance use, with mental health, with trauma. And I felt like I was a lawyer working in a very broken system that wasn’t always taking into account those issues or treating them properly, but rather using the criminal justice system to punish. And then I would see some of my clients do that hard work to get well, to get themselves out of the system and run into a brick wall when they try to do very basic things like rent an apartment, get a job, volunteer in their kid’s school, sometimes being held back years and years after their involvement in the justice system because of those old and often minor criminal records.

Matt Reynolds:

And so what was the seed, the idea that led to creating an app to try and help solve, or sorry, not solve, but at least kind of address this issue?

Noella Sudbury:

So fast forward to around 2017, I started working for the mayor of Salt Lake County as both a policy advisor on criminal justice policy issues, and as the director of the Criminal Justice Advisory Council for the county, and this is where I really got interested in expungement, our statewide department of Workforce services actually reached out to the mayor’s office and said, mayor Utah has one of the best economies in the country. And employers are saying that the criteria for a job is a living, breathing human being. And we see many living, breathing human beings in our work centers. They’re full every day. We can help with resume support, we can help with job matching, but over and over people who have criminal records are excluded from the workforce. And this isn’t good for people, it’s not good for the Utah economy, it’s not good for employers.

And so can we work collaboratively with the mayor’s office to try to tackle this issue of criminal records. So the mayor agreed to work together with the state of Utah and others, and we took a very systems approach, collective impact model of the work, and we brought people with records, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, community partners together to brainstorm how we could help make the legal system easier for folks who had a criminal record That led to some community clinic events where hundreds and hundreds of people from all throughout the state would drive sometimes four or five hours to stand in line to meet with a lawyer who might be able to help them clear up their criminal record. And I think for me, seeing just the scale of need, seeing the diversity of the need, young and old, some people standing in line if they were little kids and you ask them why they were there and they were just seeking a job, an apartment, a way to support their family, a better future, some hope.

And here I am as a lawyer that can help someone clear a criminal record, but I know that the process is really, really complicated. And to just figure out if somebody’s eligible, that’s going to take me as a lawyer 30 to 45 minutes because I’ve got to download the records, analyze them, and then if they are eligible, we’re going to have to initiate separate actions for each case that they have. It’s probably going to take me as a lawyer 15 to 20 hours of time and just be too complicated for people to do it on their own. And so those community clinics developed quite a bit of momentum and I started researching how tech could play a role. I mean, here we are surrounded by technology as lawyers, and I don’t think lawyers really utilize technology in the ways that they should to improve processes to increase access to justice.

I heard about this concept of automatic clearance. The idea of automatic clearance or sometimes clean slate is the government has all the information it needs to know who’s eligible to clear their record. We have all of the records, they have all of the records, and we have a law outlining who meets the criteria. And so could we use computer software to identify who’s eligible? And then if we could do that, the question for lawmakers was just, okay, is there on the list of people who are eligible for expungement particular crimes or particular types of people where this long complicated expungement process that the government has set up isn’t really adding anything? Maybe for certain records we could use technology to just automate that process and it could just drop off the individual’s record if they remained crime-free for a set period of time. Pennsylvania was the first state in the country to come up with this.

This was back in 2018, and it made all the sense in the world to me as a lawyer running these very manual clinics working in the field that we could use technology to create an automatic clearance law in Utah. So alongside many others, led the campaign in Utah to pass automatic clearance, which unanimously passed in Utah’s legislature in 2019. So how did we get to rasa then? Two gaps really in the law that I continue to see is I worked with stakeholders in Utah to implement this. Number one, these laws have no notification requirements. And so now we have automatic clearance in Utah, it’s going to automatically clear 534,000 records using computer software. But the government had no duty to notify people when their record was automatically cleared. And the reason for that is the government has terrible address data. They didn’t know how to reach these people.

And so the law was silent on that. And so in working with justice impacted people, they said, well, you use technology to pass this law. Could you form an organization that could create an app, a tool where someone could go to see whether or not their records were cleared? And I talked to them about what they would want that to look like. And the feedback was, don’t ask me what’s on my record. I don’t remember. I don’t know how to get records. You tell me what’s on my record and whether it could be eligible for clearance automatically under the new law, under the court based process, if it’s a higher level offense in the future, if I’m in a waiting period or not at all. If and if you could design that and make it mobile friendly, I don’t have a computer and I do not want to look this up at a library and it could be free or low cost, that is the best way that you could help me. And so it was really that feedback from users, from people trying to access the justice system that gave me the idea for raa. I just thought, yeah, I think I can do that.

Matt Reynolds:

Well, you met with any skepticism. Were there any challenges you kind of had to overcome in those early days of coming up with the idea?

Noella Sudbury:

Oh, absolutely. I think in implementing the law and even talking about the law, people said, this isn’t possible. The government’s not automated. We’re not set up for that. We’re a user. Courts are user initiated. Nothing initiated by the government is ever going to work. And this tool, if you build a notification tool, it won’t ever be accurate because government data’s not perfect and you’re not going to have all of the data that you need because some of it lives in court, some of it lives in corrections, some of it lives in probation. Sometimes records are missing information. And so there’s really no way that you can build this with any accuracy. And even if you build it, nobody’s going to know about it and nobody’s going to use it. And from the beginning, a lot of people were saying that.

Matt Reynolds:

And how did you overcome that? How did you overcome that skepticism?

Noella Sudbury:

I just moved forward. I had a belief in it. I saw how many people would come out to these clinics and just looking at how common of a problem this is, if one in three Americans have this issue and there’s a way forward, an easy way that you can figure out what to do from your mobile phone. I just had all the confidence in the world that people were going to use it. And so got some capital. We can talk about how legal regulatory reform enabled that in a minute and worked with some great engineers to get something off the ground. Launched our tool in September, 2022, that’s when it went live. And in our first year we were able to help over 10,000 people across the state of Utah determine their eligibility for record clearance almost instantly.

Matt Reynolds:

And you mentioned the regulations there. I should ask you about the Utah Sandbox. What’s that experience been like? Because I know it’s one of the few states, isn’t it out there that’s kind of loosened regulations to widen access to legal services to more people. Could you tell me about the experience of working in the sandbox and how that helped boost your app?

Noella Sudbury:

Absolutely. So the sandbox and the creation of that really created a pathway for RAA to be successful. And we really utilize the sandbox in three key ways. The first, as I mentioned, is capital. Under most state laws, it’s illegal for non-lawyers to own law firms. Well, if you are an innovator and you’re using technology, technology is extremely expensive. And to develop good technology that’s modern, that works, you need to hire software engineers. Well, if two lawyers are starting a law firm, where are we going to get a big sum of money to develop the technology that we need to develop a good product? Most people would go to venture capital. And so that’s something that I really wanted to be able to do and something that the sandbox enabled for Rasa to be owned by venture capital and we’re mostly owned by social impact funds who see this mission as critical to solving a massive issue that affects a lot of Americans. But if the sandbox didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to unlock those resources that we needed to build an application that worked, that was sustainable, that could help people at scale.

Matt Reynolds:

And how many people have cleared their criminal records using the app?

Noella Sudbury:

So as I mentioned, we’ve had over 10,000 people determine their eligibility. Now, not all of those people are eligible and not all of those people have hired us. We have successfully completed over a thousand expungements and we have about 2000 more in progress. So a high number, and we do really make it easy for people once they get inside our and can see those records, each record is going to be in a category and they can use our Calendly link and immediately just get on the phone with someone from our team to get the process started. And we collect all of the information we need from users digitally, and we just let them know through our software when we’re done and get them copies of the documents.

Matt Reynolds:

Okay. Well that seems like a good time to take a break to hear from one of our sponsors. So I’m here with Noella Sudbury talking to her about her app Rasa. I should ask you about generative AI because it’s been a big topic the past year and a lot of, I know access to justice advocates who are excited about the potential of the technology. What are you excited about and are you already using generative AI in Rasa as well?

Noella Sudbury:

So we are beginning to use generative AI or at least planning to roll that out hopefully in the next year. I think it presents so much opportunity, not just for rasa, but for the whole practice of law. I think it’s going to save our team a tremendous amount of time. And I think if built internally and used in a controlled environment, it’s just a really powerful way to deliver more affordable legal services. Now, I think that it’s a buzzword. There’s also some people who are rightly very concerned about it. I think some valid concerns or client confidentiality, hallucinations sometimes by ai, when I use AI just day to day, it gets it about 80% right? And it sounds pretty good. And so what I worry about with the law is it being used both by self-represented people or by lawyers and doing a pretty good job, but maybe making up some things that are not true or maybe missing the subtleties and that careful analysis that sometimes lawyers can provide that is outcome determinative huge opportunity. We plan to use it to help craft our pleadings and be able to deliver more affordable services, but I think it needs to be used safely. I think security, confidentiality and accuracy and review by lawyers in partnership with lawyers is really, really important.

Matt Reynolds:

And I should ask you about privacy and security because I know, and this is more of a broad question, but expunging criminal records often involves handling sensitive information. How does rasa prioritize and kind of address those privacy and security concerns for people that are using the app?

Noella Sudbury:

So privacy was a big concern of our users. And everything that we do is very, very informed by our users. And so in talking about the design for the app, a lot of people said, please include as part of your application identity verification because the last thing we want is a tool out there that makes it easier for the wrong people to get our records into their hands, right? A potential landlord or employer, just somebody that’s curious about you, so please make sure it’s us. And so our software does do that. And as people are using their tool, we take steps to verify the person’s identity to make sure that as we’re displaying records, we’re disclosing those records to the record holder. We also have an incredible amount of criminal record data, and that needs to be and is stored securely in a cloud-based, secure environment that’s controlled and protected because we know that people who are getting their records expunged, the very last thing they want is for those records to surface somewhere. And that’s why we in particular, are so careful when we talk about using generative ai. We don’t want to send that information anywhere in a way that it could resurface publicly and harm the person that we’ve done the work to help them clear their criminal record.

Matt Reynolds:

And how does Rasa kind of strike the balance between efficiency and ensuring like a thorough legal process? Are there any kind of challenges or concerns about the automating this? How do you address that?

Noella Sudbury:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that comes down to good policies, good procedures, good training, good certification checks and audits on your tech non-lawyer. So I mentioned one of the things that we’re doing in the sandbox is taking advantage of capital. The other two things that are relaxed and we take advantage of is using technology to provide limited scope legal information to people going through the process and utilizing non-lawyers to the extent that we’re still developing our technology to play some role in that legal representation process. And as we’ve taken both of those moves for our software, we had trained expungement lawyers testing determinations, giving us feedback on whether, okay, as a lawyer, as you review this case, what would the outcome be? What does our technology say? And that really early on before we even launched, ensured everyone that we were designing a product that was informed by lawyers that lawyers had a chance to test, to give feedback.

And that’s really important for any kind of technology that you’re using, is really thinking about what role do lawyers play? How can testing improve accuracy? How can feedback deliver a better product? And then on the non-lawyer side, as we’re allowing non-lawyers to prepare pleadings, making sure that we have a review process by lawyers when necessary that we have spot checks as we’re having less and less involvement by lawyers. All of those things being written down, being followed are really important to ensure that the quality of representation that we’re providing would be as good as they would receive if they worked with a lawyer.

Matt Reynolds:

And what about the users? What feedback have you got? Is there any success story that you’d like to highlight that’s come from someone clearing their record using the app?

Noella Sudbury:

I mean, so many. This is the best part of our work is to just see how quickly clearing a criminal record just absolutely transforms someone’s life within weeks of getting their record cleared. And one particular story that comes to mind is a single mom, her family had been on government benefits for generations and had never known anything else. Public housing, tanf, wic, all the programs. She was a victim of domestic violence and turned to substance use to deal with both the actual physical pain she was experiencing as well as her emotional pain developed a criminal record that was drug use related retail theft to sustain kind of that negative cycle was arrested without shoes on just rock bottom right. And she was able to get out of the criminal justice system. And after clearing her record, fast forward to today, she makes a great salary.

She just bought her first house. She never thought anyone in her family would ever have that. She started a college savings account for her five-year-old little girl, which is just an amazing transformation. But in addition to the practical opportunities that it’s created for her, what I’m most excited about is the mental and emotional pride and sense of confidence she has in herself. That is something that is such a privilege to give to a person that they believe they’re worth it, that they’re going to put themselves out there because finally they’re going to be judged for what they can contribute, not some mistake that they made several years in the past. And to see her believe that she can have a totally different life and then watch her get it is just such an empowering thing to watch and is something that we have been able to give, not just her, but thousands of people. And that at scale I think can totally transform the lives of people like my mother’s family who have known nothing but poverty.

Matt Reynolds:

And what about, you mentioned scale there. What are your for this, do you see this, you are in Utah, you launched in Arizona last week, is that right? Yes. Yeah. So what are the kind of ambitions, and do you see this as being able to scale this to an extent this app can be offered nationwide?

Noella Sudbury:

We do. That’s our goal. I think the app can be offered nationwide, and it is our plan to do that. Now, scaling a business like this, particularly in the patchwork system that we have in America, different laws governing what can, you can get off your record, different processes, different government data, different names for crime, different bar associations, interpretations of regulations. It is very weedy and it can feel really overwhelming for an innovator to just kind of be faced with the uphill battle and the challenge of it. But such an opportunity for somebody willing to dig into the weeds and figure it out. And as I’ve gone down this path, I’m just really motivated and passionate about doing that. And we have heard from and interacted with people from every state in America saying, when are you going to expand here? We really need something like RAA here. And so we’re really building a movement. And even though there are challenges, I remain encouraged and just feel like this is so vital to do that. We’re just going to keep going and figure out how to get it done.

Matt Reynolds:

And you’ve kind of mentioned the legal landscape there. It is constantly evolving, obviously. How does Rasa adapt to that changes in laws and regulations? You mentioned getting into the weeds. Is it a challenge and how do you kind of overcome that?

Noella Sudbury:

Yeah, I think a careful consultation with lawyers who are experts in these fields, many who have been so generous to me with their time to give me advice on how to structure contracts on as we approach a new state, what does the landscape look like? How do you have to adapt your model? How do you have to do things to make sure that you’re following the rules? I think dialogue and openness and transparency with bar associations goes a long way and have started to meet with access to justice commissions and bar associations to say, rasa desires to expand into your state. Here’s what our model looks like, here’s how I think it could work under your rules, but I would love some feedback and I would love to work with you to make sure that as we’re moving forward, we’re being totally transparent about the way that we’re doing it and that you agree that this is permitted by the rules.

Because I can see the pathway, of course, the economics change. I’m going to always want to prioritize markets that have adopted legal regulatory reform because that’s economically feasible for me. I can use lawyers less and pass the savings on to the people who need it, but where that’s not possible and we do need to use lawyers, how can we use our software tools like generative AI to give lawyers a headstart to hopefully reduce the amount of time that you need lawyers to be involved in the process. And I think that can be done anywhere. It takes a village. And I just feel so lucky to have good lawyers, to have good consultants, to have a lot of eyes on creating a pathway to make this possible.

Matt Reynolds:

And Justice Tech, it’s quite a small space. It often feels like that, that it’s quite a close-knit community. I should ask you about that. What are the other apps out there in this space that have impressed you?

Noella Sudbury:

I learn about new apps every day. I mean, this is small field, rapidly changing field, and there’s so much cool stuff going on out there. Some companies or some initiatives I would highlight I love, I learned about at socap, a social entrepreneurship conference a couple of months ago, a company called Justice Text, which is really, really cool. TEXT tool that helps analyze criminal records to make it easier for public defenders who are representing someone in the court system to access key pieces of evidence or if there’s a dispute that comes up in real time. Let’s find that, let’s review that. Let’s put it in the hands of the lawyers at the time. They need it in the Courtroom and really just uses generative AI and searching and all of this amazing technology to just analyze legal records and help lawyers to zero in on what matters. Really, really amazing founder, very passionate, very cool product. Others, many involved in the Justice Tech, Association and Kovich and her group, a company called People Clerk that’s trying to streamline the small claims process for Americans, simple citizens and immigration platform. That’s really great. Turn Signal is a piece of software that records police encounters and connects people to a lawyer’s real time who can help people navigate a traffic stop safely. There are so many cool companies out there. I could go on and on, but those are a few that I’m particularly excited about.

Matt Reynolds:

And that leads me to another question because you are almost talking about the future. When you talk about apps and what’s going on in the criminal justice space, what are you most excited about and what do you think the future does hold for companies like Rasa? You mentioned justice, text, turn signal that are working in this space.

Noella Sudbury:

I mean, I think a better future for law. It is sad to me as a lawyer that 85% of people who are in the justice system now are self-represented because they can’t afford a lawyer, they can’t access a lawyer. That is a really sobering statistic. And technology is key to bridging that gap. So I am really excited to see so much innovation, see so much potential and hope that it will be embraced by lawyers. I mean, lawyers are worried about this and I think there is some sometimes feelings of turf, feelings of feeling threatened, but lawyers are not going away. And I wish more lawyers would understand just how technology can help improve their own practice. Someone once said to me, should automate everything. That doesn’t require creativity or judgment. And I think lawyers could learn so much from that, right? You don’t need to be spending your time doing things that software can do for you. Let’s focus your time on where lawyers are needed and use technology to do the rest. And if we’re able to do that, we can make lawyers more affordable. We can make the justice system more accessible to so many Americans and worldwide, globally who are struggling to access an antiquated justice system that is just decades and decades behind the rest of the world.

Matt Reynolds:

And finally, I should ask too, Utah, Arizona, have you got another state on your list next? What’s in your sights?

Noella Sudbury:

Not one I’m ready to announce just yet. I’ve got a handful of states that I’ve got my eye on and we will get into another state in 2024, at least one. I am carefully watching what’s happening in Texas. There’s a very active legal regulatory reform conversation going on there. But I really think we can expand anywhere. To me, I’m looking at how good is the law? What can people get off their records? How good is the data and how centralized is that system, right? Because a state like California is huge, but if I have to separately negotiate data sharing agreements with 58 different counties, that’s just not going to be possible for me. And so I’m really looking at markets and courts really that have done the work to centralize their data, that are forward thinking, and then just sort of how many people are there, how many people could we impact? Because we really are passionate about impacting as many people as we possibly can. And so the bigger estate is if the right recipe is there, we’re ready to expand and deliver services and are just really, really eager to do that.

Matt Reynolds:

Well, thanks so much for coming onto the podcast today and talking about the work you do. That was Noella Sudbury. I’m Matt Reynolds a legal affairs writer with the ABA Journal, and you’ve been listening to the Legal Rebels podcast.

Speaker 1:

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