Episode 89: Noella A. Sudbury
Founder and CEO of Rasa Public Benefit Corporation
01:10:41
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Show Notes
Noella A. Sudbury is the Founder and CEO of Rasa Public Benefit Corporation, a new legal tech company on a mission to make the process of clearing a record simple and affordable for everyone. In this episode, she talks with MC Sungaila about her career journey—from attending law school, going to the public defender's office, working in Utah's leading appellate law boutique, transitioning to Goldman Sachs to gain management and team building experience, then moving to government policy work which led her to found Rasa. Noella's journey is an unconventional one. Tune in to hear insights from a singular intellect on the rise.
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About Noella A. Sudbury:
Noella is the Founder and CEO of Rasa Public Benefit Corporation, a new legal tech company on a mission to make the process of clearing a record simple and affordable for everyone. Noella is a licensed Utah attorney with over a decade of experience in criminal law, policy, and data-driven justice reform. While serving as a Senior Policy Advisor to Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, Noella led the successful campaign to pass Utah’s Clean Slate law, which automates the expungement process for more than 450,000 Utahns. Noella has served on the National Clean Slate Initiative Steering Committee and has provided technical assistance to other state campaigns to pass automatic clearance. Noella has received several honors and awards for her public service, including being selected as Utah Business Magazine’s 2019 Woman of the Year and being honored with the 2022 Distinguished Service Award from the Utah State Bar. In her spare time, Noella enjoys the outdoors and spending time with her two girls.
Transcript
In this episode, I’m very pleased to have Noella Sudbury join us. She has an amazing background for a still new lawyer, at least from my perspective, both in the appellate work and now also doing important work in the criminal law round with regard to expungement. She is also the Founder and CEO of the Rasa Legal Public Benefit Corporation in Utah. Welcome.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be on the show.
I’m pleased to have you. You're doing interesting things. I’m very bullish and positive about the future of the profession with folks like you and others, particularly in legal tech and access to justice areas doing a lot of interesting work, and combining your legal training with entrepreneurialism as well. In your case, a lot of public services. First, I wanted to start out with how you decided to go to law school and have a background in terms of wanting to be a lawyer.
I was very young when I decided to go to law school. I was a Social Justice major in college, which was an interdisciplinary degree option through the honors college. That's where I initially got interested in the law. I was very interested in poverty and how different disciplines looked at some of the causes of poverty. I took some intro to law classes as part of that education at the University of Utah and became fascinated with the law. When I graduated with my undergraduate degree in Social Justice and Political Science, it seemed a natural next step for me. I didn't know any lawyers. I didn't talk to any lawyers before I applied to law school. I just put my application in. I applied to one school, the University of Utah, and got in.
Sometimes people think they need to have lawyers in the family or no lawyers. That's not necessarily true in any career choice. Sometimes, you intuitively go in a direction and then later, it makes sense. It’s like, “That makes a lot of sense, given the background and the interest I had.” In my case, I didn't have any lawyers I knew of in my family or know anything about it when I decided that I’m going to be a lawyer.
It turned out to be perfect being an appellate lawyer since I love writing. That's what we do in terms of persuading through writing. It all works out. That's the thing, but there are so many different things in law school and many different areas you can pursue. Going to law school is not one path. There are so many different ways to go and so many different things you can do with that law degree. It does make sense, given your interests.
Many Political Science majors end up in law school but also your interest in problem-solving. That's a common theme that I’ve heard from those who decide to go to law school as well. After law school, I know you practiced in private practice and you had a clerkship also. Maybe you can talk about the clerkship and what impact that had on your career direction and mentorship and things that to you. I just want to make sure that people considered whether a clerkship is right for them.
I loved my clerkship. I clerked for Justice Ronald Nehring on the Utah Supreme Court. It was one of the best ways to start my legal career. I learned so much about many different areas of law. It was interesting because going into the clerkship, I actually had an offer from a firm to go back to a law firm. It was 2009. The firms shut down, and I had this clerkship but I didn't have a job to go back to afterwards. As a young law student with loans, I was a little bit panicked about that.
What was great about the clerkship is it opened my eyes to how many other opportunities there were and how many other interesting areas of law I could learn about. That's where I fell in love with Criminal Law. I thought the criminal cases were so interesting. I went back to my Social Justice degree and my undergraduate studies on poverty and the social issues that people in the justice system were facing and see how those issues were impacting what was happening to them in the justice system.
Because I didn't have a job to go back to, the judge I was clerking for said, “You seem to love these criminal cases. Have you ever thought about being a public defender?” I would see these oral advocates from the public defender's office like Linda Jones, who's now a judge. They were some of the best advocates that we would see at the Supreme Court doing these oral arguments. I thought, “I would love to be one of these women. Maybe I’ll give this a try.” My clerkship influenced me to take that next step and take that first job out of law school as a baby lawyer at the public defender's office.
Both the exposure to the different areas of law that you got from the clerkship, and also that mentoring and nudging from your judge in terms of, “Would you consider this?” You might not have been thinking about that.
To your point also about strengthening those writing skills, some of the best advice that I got in my legal career came from a justice on the Supreme Court who told me that in drafting an opinion, I should be shooting for a sixth-grade reading level, which to me was so eyeopening. We write for the people and we're making the law.
Lawyers have this tendency to use big words and over-complicate things, and it's not necessary. The best opinions are the ones that anybody without a law degree can read and understand because that is largely who the law is influencing. Through my clerkship, being able to develop those skills as a writer to write clearly and concisely, and also write in a way that you can communicate with the general public was a skill I was so grateful to learn early in my career.
That's a good reminder, especially if you're an advocate and writing for the court to make the court's job easier. The court is ultimately going to write opinions that are much more accessible, then it also behooves you to write in a way that's much easier that can translate to that opinion. There are a lot of things that you learned from a clerkship that didn't have that perspective. You were looking at things very differently. It's so hard to get that perspective unless you join the bench. You don't have the opportunity for that perspective.
I think that accelerates your training going through a clerkship, and then also the close relationship you have with the judges that you work for. They're great about that. You went to the public defender's office. You talked about Linda Jones. I know Linda as well through Troy and Michael from the law firm they ended up founding together before she joined the bench. It’s a small world. She has always been an amazing Appellate advocate in particular. You went to public defenders. How was that? You have a vision of it but you never thought about doing it before.
I liked it. The public defender's office both at the trial level and the appellate level is so interesting and has such great training for lawyers. I was surprised how much independence I had like, “Here are your cases. Here are your clients. Go.” I had a great team there. John Lott was a huge mentor to me. Lori Seppi and Debra Nelson are some great women to brainstorm with as I was thinking about framing issues and which issues we raise on appeal. At the same time, I had the independence to make the arguments I felt were the best, advocate for my clients, and to be able to meet my clients and have that interaction.
As I said, I went to law school very young. I started at age twenty. I will never forget my early interactions with some of my clients when I walked into the jail and prison. They were surprised by how young I looked. They were like, "You are my public defender? Are you thirteen? How old are you?" Having that shock for me and wanting to be confident and credible in their eyes and have them be so frank about what they were thinking, "If I could afford a real attorney, I would get someone much better than you. It was good for my growth and my confidence.
When I started to have some success with some of those cases, I developed that confidence that I needed in myself that I could do this. I’m a great lawyer. It doesn't matter that I’m young and I look young. I’ve got a great mind. I’m a good writer. I’m a good advocate and I can get great results. To see the reputation I had of myself change was great. It was a real growth experience for me to be there.
Confidence comes from accomplishing it too. Sometimes, you don't always know what you can do until you do it. You like, “I’m good at that. I have a knack for that.” When that judge mentioned that to you, I was wondering if maybe he saw that in you. Sometimes I think people suggest things that you can't see things in yourself, but they see them. It's a nudge because they see possibilities in you that you later see, but you didn't recognize early on.
My career has been very influenced by people who had confidence in me when I didn't have confidence in myself. That started truly in law school. Some people are surprised now to learn that I was terrified of public speaking. I would be the quietest person in the class. I would never raise my hand because I felt everybody was smarter. What I had to say, I wonder what people would think about it.
The best opinions are those that anybody without a law degree can read and understand because that is largely who the law influences.
That was a hurdle for me initially that I needed to get over. A lot of people urged me to develop those skills through court and some of these opportunities. I learned that I could do it. I think a lot of lawyers, particularly female lawyers, struggle with that. They don't see that gift that they have in themselves, whether it be public speaking or writing, and those incredible mentors can bring that out. When someone you respect sees that in you, you begin to see it in yourself.
At least I do it less now, but I still need it sometimes. If there's some opportunity, you look at all the boxes and you go, “I only have seven of those, and not sure if I should be pursuing that.” You're like, “No. Seven is fine. Go for it.” Sometimes, we have to train ourselves to stop for that reason.
Don’t get in your own way.
When you said you had to learn public speaking basically, did you do anything in particular to say, “Now I need skills? I’ve certainly done that. This skill isn't as good as another one. I need to work on that.” Whether it's taking voice lessons or doing more presentations so that over time, you're comfortable with them. I’m curious how you did that.
Starting in law school, the advice I got from a legal writing professor was, “You're so smart and a great writer. You need to put yourself out there more and develop this skill for public speaking. The best way to do that is to put yourself in situations of discomfort and force yourself to see that you could be successful.” His advice was, “Sign up for all of the courts and see if you like it. I think you'll be surprised by how good at it you are,” which I did in law school. I sign up for trial advocacy.
It was uncomfortable but I was forced to develop those skills to identify the ticks. I would listen to myself, critique myself, and ask for tons and tons of feedback from my partner. You would get feedback from the judges like, “At the podium, you're doing this weird rocking thing because you're nervous. Stop doing that. It's distracting.” Without forcing yourself to try to be true to yourself about what you see as your weaknesses, be committed to doing something about them, and then look for opportunities and be open to feedback to make those weaknesses a strength.
As I’ve continued in my career, the court experience helped a tremendous amount with public speaking. Good mentors, moots, rave, practicing, and getting feedback from everybody about language, framing and communication helped a tremendous amount. Later in my career, I’ve probably given hundreds of presentations on expungement. I have testified in multiple legislatures throughout the nation. Some of it comes with time, experience and success, which builds upon success but that is very much not where I started. It's a lot of growth.
I thought it was an interesting microcosm of how growth happens. There's a lot of work on your part and there’s a lot of intentionalities that are required. Basically, you got to take a hit sometimes. You look at stuff and go, "I do that? That's terrible. I need to stop that.” It’s the same thing when somebody says, “You might try this.” You have to have enough courage to be able to see that and go, “We're going to change that.” It would be hard for people to do that.
It’s a lot of humility, courage, bravery, and being willing to listen to people that you respect who are trying to help you. There are also a lot of people who will be critical that were not trying to help you. You need to learn to sort those voices, but also when feedback is legitimate, to be critical of yourself and be like, “This is a weakness. This is something I need to work on. This is how I’m going to work on it.”
That's good, filtering between you can tell when someone is being helpful. It might be a tough comment to take when they're trying to be helpful because they want you to succeed. That's a different comment than the people who want to turn you down or they were petty about something. The other thing that I do is I listen to people I admire let's say in an appellate argument, people who I think are the best at what they do in a certain setting.
I listen to all different arguments and advocates who I think are good and who have different skills and strengths and say, “Why do I think that was good?” It's not that you're copying those people, but you're recognizing what's effective, why you like their presentation, and maybe adopting some of that for your own. Never wholesale becoming that person because that's not genuine and it doesn't work. There’s value-add too.
I learned a tremendous amount from my clerkship. Knowing this was a skill that I was trained to develop, I often asked myself, “Why are these particular people so good? What are they doing in response to the questions that are working for the justices?” Also, being on the other end to see what the decision-making process was has helped me to understand what is effective, what they want, and what judges are looking for.
Knowing who your audience is and who you're speaking to and being able to address what they're focused on is a skill that lawyers should have. The effective people who know how to do it get it. There are lots of ineffective lawyers who totally missed the mark. In my legal career, there is so much learning from observing and using that analytical skillset that you develop in law school to understand how to be more effective yourself.
You're describing well in the different settings how you do that, the different opportunities that you have to do that in the different roles that you've had, and the special lens you can get from the clerkship from seeing all parts of the process and saying, “That looked effective but it wasn't effective in the decision-making process on the judicial end. Is there something else that might look showy but maybe a different tactic to get a good decision?”
The opportunity at the Public Defender's Office to take charge of cases and to have that responsibility is daunting, but it also gives you a lot of room to grow and get your own strategy and look at the big picture of a case instead of whatever particular assignment you might have bought in one particular matter. You move from the Public Defender's Office and did some private practice work. How did that come about? Was that related to Linda's move at all?
Yes, it was. As I mentioned, Linda was an advocate that I admired throughout my clerkship. She was responsible for the development of so much of the Criminal Law. She joins Zimmerman Jones Booher along with Michael Zimmerman, a former Supreme Court Justice himself, and Troy Booher. They were looking for new associates, and Linda was looking for someone who could help her with the criminal cases.
It’s an opportunity to work with someone I admired so much and make more money than the Public Defender's Office. My salary was so low starting out there. I was struggling to pay my rent and my student loans on of $43,000 a year salary. The firm offered a lot more money and the opportunity to not just do Criminal Law but some Civil Law as well, and learn from some of the greatest lawyers in Utah. When they approached me about the opportunity, it seems a natural move for me at that point.
I remember that it was both a happy and sad day when they formed the firm because they left us and my appellate buddies. It was sad but also so exhilarating because they were not only starting this hybrid civil and criminal appellate boutique, but it is the first appellate boutique in the entire State of Utah. Being responsible for carving out and creating an appellate specialty within a state is exciting in itself. I was excited for them. I’m happy that they're doing so well and continue to do so. Now it's Zimmerman Booher because Linda did join the bench partway through. She's a gracious and very strong advocate.
What an opportunity. That's interesting. I also remember how collaborative everything was when I would come to visit, sit around, discuss things, have teamwork, and work on cases. In my view, it is the best way to do appellate work. It’s to have that collaboration and push the law and see which is the best way to argue this. All of that best comes from a collaborative team environment and not totally by yourself. As you said in the Public Defender's Office, “I was able to brainstorm with these strong advocates that result in a great work product."
That was certainly true of the firm. I can't think of three more different people than Linda, Troy and Michael. That was great for me to see in my career because they are all very successful but so different and to be able to say as a new lawyer, “This is what I like about Linda's style. This is what I like about Michael's style. This is what I can learn from Troy.” As I’m developing my own identity and approach, I can borrow these different things that I like about three very good lawyers who were all working together.
A lot of lawyers, particularly female lawyers, don't see the gift they have in themselves, and incredible mentors can bring that out. When someone you respect sees that in you, you begin to see it in yourself.
They're very much learned people and they have very different styles of advocacy and personalities. It's important to have things that work for you and that fit with you, not to try and be someone else yet to learn to see different things. That works for me. I can use those techniques. That's great. Tell me how you've ended up back to your public defender days, but forward also in terms of policy work in a criminal law office with the government, and now with your own entrepreneurial ventures as well. Tell me about that part of the journey.
I was at the firm for about four years. From there, I was recruited to go to Goldman Sachs. That was an interesting career move for me. A lot of people said, "You shouldn't do this. You should continue and become a judge and join the bench." I wanted to learn more about managing people and projects. I think Goldman Sachs is good at those two things. When I was approached about the opportunity and they told me that if I joined the team, I would have the opportunity to have the training to be a manager, manage people projects, and work in a global firm setting on all of these interesting issues. The area of law I was focused on was political law compliance during the election year. It's interesting.
It seems like a great opportunity for me to develop those skills. I was ready for a change at that point and took a jump as this manager and went over there. I actually loved Goldman. It was the first time I felt part of a global company and out of Salt Lake and the United States, working with teams all over the world. They did some incredible things charitably and loved developing those skills as a project manager and as a people manager.
That's how I became aware of Mayor Ben McAdams, who I later went to work for. At that time, he was starting one of the nation's first Pay For Success Projects, which is social bonds using private financing to try to pilot out innovative solutions to social problems. Since that deal involved a political official, and that was part of my role at Goldman, I learned a lot about social bonds with him. I thought how cool it is that I’m now managing this nationwide team. Salt Lake is the third largest Goldman Sachs office in the world. I worked with people from all over the country and all over the world.
The mayor where I live is doing something interesting to try to tackle criminal justice reform, which is something I deeply care about. He saw it as a major issue when I was at the Public Defender's Office. When he reached out to me then when I was working for Goldman and said, “I think you have this interesting background and this diverse career. You're a criminal defense attorney but also a manager at Goldman. Have you ever considered working for the government? I’m looking for somebody to work in policy on criminal justice reform, and I’m eager to get in the weeds. I think your background will be perfect.”
For me, that was my dream job. That's what I wish I could have done starting with law schools, to get on the policy side and change some of these laws and processes that are broken, so I jumped at the opportunity. I took a massive pay cut. I made less than half of what I was making at Goldman. I knew it was something I wanted to do. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the mayor. That's how I ended up in government and started doing policy work in the criminal justice system. I loved it.
It was such an amazing job to be able to be working for the county, the county funds, and the criminal justice system. Being able to meet with police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, and community partners. Take a look at problems from a systems perspective. Get people in the room and figure out how to fix something that's broken in a way that is not siloed where you can see all the pieces. It was an incredible opportunity to use some of those skills as a problem solver and as an attorney to make a change in the world. It was awesome.
It's interesting because if you were hearing the story, certainly the Goldman Sachs, it would be like, “I didn't see that one coming.” The way you describe it is in terms of skill-building, which is interesting. It is a skill that the management and working in teams are essential in the policy work because you're working with a number of stakeholders. You also have a lot of different people implementing things. You need strong management skills and team-building skills in order to execute.
Those aren't exactly the skills that were trained well in law school. We do our own thing. Maybe we team up and brainstorm and things like that, but we don't have a lot of training in leading. I remember UCLA Law School is right next door to the business school. You would see us outside the law school, nose buried, drinking our coffee, reading things, and maybe in a study group but maybe not. The MBAs would be having all these team projects, corporations, and all these various things. They were learning how to work together, lead a team, and be a team member. I thought those are two completely different things that are going on in these two graduate schools. We seem to be missing in that component.
I wish that law schools would be more focused on it because when you work in a law firm, you do have to manage people and projects. Law school doesn't have the training to do it. It's such an important skill. I think the lack of that management training has hurt women in the profession in particular because people don't know how to manage people. I think if that were a component, you would see fewer women leaving law firms for other opportunities. That's obviously not the only issue going on there. I think it is part of the problem. I would hope the law schools would take a page out of the business school book and say, “If we want people to have diverse opportunities and be successful, we need to help lawyers develop management skills.”
Public Defender work and management skills have a certain level of empathy that's necessary for both of those positions. There's a continuity there as well. It's interesting to me in terms of how you chose the next step. I've heard that most people are unintentional in terms of either skills or necessarily people they want to work with. I interviewed Ann Kappler, who is the general counsel of Prudential Financial. She talked about how she chose the next place to go. It was like, “I wanted to work from and learn from this particular person. He was the leader at that point in time.” I kept thinking that's an interesting way to make that decision, just as an interesting way to say, “I need a particular skill. This is a great place to add this skill.”
I love the same mind. I consider myself a curious person who can do a lot of things and I love to learn. I feel like I could be happy doing a lot of things, but not if I don't believe in the people that I work for, have good managers, and have people that I respect. I almost feel like in considering opportunities, people are more important than the what. If I believe in the person that I’m working for and I feel like I have things to learn from them that are going to benefit me in my career, that's a better opportunity than an interesting subject matter. Having a bad manager can truly make work a terrible experience. I think if you're lucky enough to have choices, who do I want to be like? Who do I want to learn from? Those people that are going to invest in you and help you to succeed, and that's going to lead to other opportunities in the future.
That's a great description of that and being conscious about things. By the way, it's very clear to me that you have many different skills and you are curious. That's the term, but I want to think about always learning and there’s the lifelong learner approach. You have that. You're curious and you have always been interested in learning new things. The third part is connecting all of those things together in new ways. That leads to your next arena of building all of this from working within the political policy, but then now with your own independent work. Tell me about Rasa and how that came to be.
I was doing policy work, working for the mayor of Salt Lake County. One of the issues that I had the privilege to work on was expungement. That was what led to Rasa. I got a phone call from someone who worked at the Department of Workforce Services, and the individual on the phone said, "Noella, we have all of these metro centers all across Utah where we're trying to help people get jobs. Utah has one of the top economies in the nation. What I see are people who have great skills that have so much to offer to employers who have a gap in their resume because of their criminal justice system involvement, but they desperately want a job. They're good people and hard workers. All the employer sees is a criminal record. It's devastating to the people. It's frustrating to me as a manager of these metro centers. You're a lawyer. Can you come down and tell people how to get their records cleared?”
Having done a little bit of this work as a public defender and throughout my career, I knew enough to know how difficult the process was, how complex it would be to try and represent yourself in that process and how costly it is. I said, “I’m not going to come down and tell people how to expunge the records because I don't think that will be effective. If you're interested, I’m excited about the collaboration. Why don't we bring a lot of people with records into the room, along with judges, public defenders, prosecutors, and community partners, and talk about how we can tackle this issue?”
This is a huge issue that's not only affecting people looking for jobs but our entire economy. To have employers say, "I'm looking for a living breathing human being as the criteria," and then have thousands of people who meet that criteria who are being passed over were crazy to me. That collaboration ended up with Utah's first Expungement Day event, which was in April of 2018. The idea that we came up with after we did this big brainstorming system thinking session was for one day, could we get a bunch of people in a room who have records, a bunch of volunteer leaders, and bring the entire system to the people? Let's bring the judges, the prosecutors, and the public defenders. Have people arrive at a warehouse with a record and leave the warehouse without one.
Could we take this totally broken process that typically takes a year from start to finish? Could we do it in one day? Would that be possible? If we were to try that, what might you learn about changes that we would want to make to that system? The mayor was extremely supportive. He's like, “You should totally do this,” and so we did it. For me, it was a huge turning point in my career because I remember showing up at 6:00 in the morning to set up for the event. It was still dark outside and there was already a line of people. The event didn't start until 10 AM. I’m like, “Who are you? Are you here for breakfast because we have a soup kitchen? Breakfast is moved across the street.” They are somehow waiting for Expungement Day.
I started talking to these people and ask, “Tell me about your story. Why are you here? Why do you want your record expunged? You see the diversity of the people and the scale of the problem in a very invisible way. To hear that people drove from St. George, which is five hours away, all night long for the chance to meet with an attorney who could perhaps help them move forward with their life was so eye-opening to me.
It's also very ingenious that you have it all in one day. You have a microcosm and see all the different ways it plays out. Otherwise, it's all discreetly happening or not happening in different individuals, judges, and courtrooms around the state. It's hard to study that.
It was eye-opening to the courts and the judges to see, “I usually approach these cases as this one expungement matter.” This was one of the big learnings. The filing fee for expungement is $150. I think the person accounts for that so I’m not going to grant this waiver, not knowing that in evaluating that person's income and the $150, they have six other cases they're trying to expunge. All of which have filing fees. Maybe a person can afford $150, but they can't afford thousands of dollars. Yet they're being asked to do that at the same time because we're so siloed in our approach to decision-making.
You need to put yourself out there more and develop the skill for public speaking. The best way to do that is to put yourself in situations of discomfort and see that you could be successful.
That's one example of all of the learnings from the day about how many different barriers there are for people moving through the justice system and how broken these processes can be. If you're focused on there's one case and not being holistic in your view of the problem, then you're missing a lot. That a lot can make a huge difference in that person's life.
You're right. I think if individual judges or if presiding judges or whatever knew about the scope of the problem, they would look at it in the open differently, but it's invisible because it's across so many different places. To gather that data and information is hard. You need to get funding to do that, then they always say, “What's the magnitude of the problem?” You're like, “I have no idea because I want to start it and find out.” People go, “No. There are other more pressing things.” There are a lot of barriers to getting into that.
We learned an incredible amount from the day and there was so much momentum coming out of the event. On every level, the takeaway for every individual agency was, "This system is broken. The scale of this problem is so huge. None of us realized it." We were able to clear about 200 records that day, which I felt awesome about. I then started thinking, “I wonder how many people have criminal records?” That's when I learned that one in three Americans, over 800,000 Utahns have criminal records. All of a sudden, these 200 records felt super small because that event was so time-intensive to take on. A lot of resources went into it to make it free.
That's when I started googling innovative policy solutions to explain to them like, "How can we tackle this in a scalable way?" We can't hold enough of these expungement clinics to help address this major societal issue. That's how I learned the concept of Clean Slate Law and Automatic Clearance. At that time, Pennsylvania was the first state in the nation to be advancing one of these laws. The idea of a Clean Slate is the government actually has all of the information it needs to know who's eligible to clear their records. We have a statute that has the criteria, and they have all the records. Could we use computer technology? Could we use code to analyze who's eligible, and might policymakers identify a list of offenses where maybe this difficult complicated process that we've set up isn't adding much?
If you look at how many of these expungements get granted, it's a very high percentage. It's over 90%. A lot of them are granted without any objection or involvement from the prosecutor. The question for lawmakers was, what crimes belong on that list? As long as they’ve done everything that the court has asked them to do. They remained crane free for a set period of time. They've paid all their fines, their fees, and their restitution. Might there just be a point where that process is not required and we just allow people to move forward with their lives? That was the concept of the Clean Slate.
I cannot say enough good things about Sharon Dietrich and the people from Pennsylvania and the bill sponsors who get on the phone with me. They sent me their address and help me understand how to start a campaign to pass a lot and change a lot. I had done some policy work in the mayor's office but never at this scale. I learned a tremendous amount from that about what was possible and what partners I would need to bring in to be successful, and how it could work with the chamber and make this a workforce priority for the state of Utah.
It’s about workforce development more so than criminal justice reform. That had a tremendous impact on the success of our campaign in Utah. It was out of the mayor's office that we conceived the Clean Slate. I approached Representative Eric Hutchings who had been an expungement champion for years in the Utah legislature and asked him, “Would you sponsor this?” I’m trying to organize this coalition of support. He was amazing to work with.
In 2019 Utah became the second state in the nation to pass the Clean Slate Law. It was unanimous. I’ve never worked on anything with the rest of the state legislature. It was amazing in a state as red as Utah to see that and to see that lawmakers, even conservative lawmakers, could get it and understand why this was important for the economy, why it promotes public safety, and why it was good for people. To see that support for me was an amazing day.
The Clean Slate Law in Utah, what kinds of crimes or convictions does it apply to? How does it work?
Each state governs who can expunge their record. Across the United States, it is a patchwork. There are some states that allow you to have nothing cleared from your record. There are some that allow multiple felonies. Utah is right in the middle. Under Utah law, both individuals can expunge both misdemeanor and felony records.
Our Automatic Clearance Law applies only to lower-level misdemeanor offenses. It's most B and C misdemeanors and class-A drug possession. If individuals have that type of background, they remained crane free for a set period of time. For a C, it's five years. For a B, it's six years. For a misdemeanor, it's seven years. They've done everything the court has asked them to do.
Basically, a computer code is looking for the right combination of cases. If somebody has a record that qualifies, then it's actually the courts who identify that person's eligibility using their records. An order is automatically generated to expunge that record and sent over to the Department of Public Safety for full expungement.
These laws are structured differently across the US. Some are more suing laws. In Utah, our Clean Slate Law has the same effect as a traditional expungement would if someone were to go through that petition-based court process. It's removed from their court history, Utah criminal history, and FBI record. How does it work for the individual? They do nothing. There's a lot of work behind the scenes for the government to do it. The court is identifying and querying constantly its database, looking for new cases that are eligible. It's generating these orders. Those are sent through a portal at the Department of Public Safety, then they've developed a system to expunge each record.
Do you have to get an order or get a notice like, “Here's your certificate of expungement?”
No. This is one of the main reasons for the formation of Clean Slate Utah, which is a nonprofit that I formed to raise awareness of Automatic Clearance but also for Rasa because Utah is the second state in the nation that has now nine Clean Slate Laws. None of them has to write notification requirements. The government is going to spend tons of time and money to clear all of these records automatically but if people don’t know, we have no impact.
I started thinking about we use all of this technology to implement this law. I learned an incredible amount about government data, coding, the different types of engineers, and how to use technology to do this. Could we use that technology again to solve this notification requirement and create an easy way for a person with a record to type in their name and date of birth, and have that quick legal advice as to what is on their record and what is eligible for expungement, not just automatically but under the petition-based process as one.
As I was talking to justice-involved people, they were saying, “It would be helpful to receive notice that something was auto cleared, but more holistically, I want to know, is my whole record gone? If it's not, is it eligible for expungement? If so, how can I easily obtain that in a streamlined low-cost way?” Rasa does both of those things.
We will be publicly launching a web application that is powered by court records where an individual can come to our site or use it from their mobile phone. They type in their name and date of birth. We'll verify their identity and make sure it's that person, and then in a very user-friendly format, they'll have these cards, “Here are your records that are eligible for automatic clearance. Here are your records that are eligible for court-based clearance. Here are the records that are not yet eligible, but have a possibility to be eligible after a waiting period that will allow you to clear your record right away, or these are the records that are not eligible.”
I think it's going to have a tremendous impact on notification because it can be accessed from anywhere by anyone and tell people what their rights are. For a person with their record, it can be so complex and overwhelming to even figure out if you're eligible because the laws are confusing. There are wait times and you have to know exactly what the severity was and what the crimes were because not everything is eligible. Some people don't know how to get their records. Some people don't remember what's on their records.
It tackles all of those challenges of why are we putting the burden on people to try and figure this out on their own, or require that they need an expensive lawyer to get through the process because then we're only going to serve people with resources. Can we use technology to create a simplified solution for people regardless of where they live or how much money they have? Our web application will do that, then to the extent that individuals have records that are eligible for expungement that is not automatically eligible, they have to go through the court-based process.
Be true to yourself about what you see as your weaknesses, be committed to doing something about them, and then look for opportunities to make those weaknesses a strength.
Could we develop a solution to streamline that process and make it affordable for people who need it? It was born out of this whole work in expungement that I identify these two outstanding issues, even after this Clean Slate Law, which impacts over 450,000 Utahns that will have at least one record cleared as a result of Clean Slate. What about the work that remains? What about people who are not eligible, have felony records, and maybe need this the most? What about the racial and ethnic inequity that exists in the criminal justice system where you have a person of color who is charged for the same conduct? One is charged with a felony and one is charged with a misdemeanor. There's bias in our system. Researchers have written a lot about Clean Slate. By focusing on these lower-level offenses, we have racial and ethnic impacts because of the overcharging and the bias that exists.
In California, there are wobblers. It could be the same thing. They’re charged as a misdemeanor and promulgate prosecutorial discretion.
It is largely unchecked. This was also a way to ensure that if you are eligible to clear your record, you have an option that is affordable regardless of how it was charged or what the outcome was. That's what Rasa does. We opened in February 2022 and we're a startup. We are a public benefit corporation. We are a for-profit corporation. We have incorporated into our bylaws that our mission to make record clearance simple and affordable for everyone is always going to be balanced against the money that we make. The investors of Rasa are very committed to access to justice and to serving people to make the world a better place.
We're starting in Utah. We plan to expand, and I’m very much watching what's going on with legal and regulatory reform around the country. You mentioned California before we got on. I’m so saddened to see what is happening with sandboxes and reg reform in California. I think other states like Michigan will develop a sandbox as Utah has. Arizona and other states are tackling these access to justice issues in a big way because they have to. People are going to do this illegally if we don't create legal pathways to deliver legal services in a way that's affordable and accessible.
It is heartbreaking to me as a lawyer that 85% of people in the United States are self-represented. Lawyers are serving 15%. That is a failure of our justice system. States are going to recognize that, and bars led by Supreme Courts are going to see that. When that wave of reform, which I predict will happen but it's going to take time, happens as it has in Utah, we will be ready to bring our models to the rest of the country.
How much of your model depends on the sandbox and some of the regulatory changes? Some part of it doesn't, right? To the extent you're still serving as a resource for people to see the status of things and maybe referring people to somewhere else where they could get help to expunge the expungeable felony records. That would be acceptable I think. It's the extension of saying, “It's expensive to hire that lawyer to expunge that. We would like to have a process that would help us do that and cost them a lot less money.”
The sandbox does three things for us. Rasa can practice in states that don't have sandboxes. It's just going to be a lot more expensive. However, we're using it in Utah. Rasa applied and took a step back. Typically, we only allow lawyers to practice law. We don't allow computers to practice law or non-lawyers to practice law. There are some reasons for that, but the Utah Supreme Court did a big study showing how few people who need lawyers for their civil legal needs have lawyers.
Innovation is required. There are a lot of people that need lawyers who don't have one. Can we relax those typical rules governing lawyers to allow for innovation in the form of legal advice to new computer tools and software, and allow the training and practice of law by non-lawyers for certain aspects of someone's legal work?
At Rasa, we are doing both of those things. This web application is legal advice. It is analyzing somebody's legal records and giving them specific advice without talking to a lawyer about what their options are. The sandbox allows us to do that. Second, if someone is eligible to clear their record, we are utilizing the support of non-lawyers to deliver cheaper services to the person. To expunge your record in the private market would costs typically $2,000 to $3,000.
Rasa will represent someone, and it is fully a legal representation for $500. In order to do that, we're utilizing software. We're also training people who have been through the expungement process themselves to stand in as that person's lawyer for some aspects of the process and draft paperwork, negotiate with prosecutors, and file their documents in court. The ability to do that allows us to provide affordable services to people.
The third way for utilizing the sandbox is that it allows us to be personally owned by non-lawyers under most bars and those alternatives. Financing structures are not allowed. It has allowed me to raise money from investors who want to invest in the impact. Without that upfront capital, there's no way that I would have the resources as a new company to be able to build this software and build this company in a way that's scalable.
There are ways we can work with lawyers to approve what the software is doing to practice in states that haven't taken these steps. I would much rather be in a state that has taken these steps because I’m going to be able to operate at lower costs and keep my prices low. As someone who is super focused on impact, I’m committed to that. I’m much more likely to enter states where we can bring that model and invest in the leadership of people who have records.
I will tell you that Amy, one of the women who work for me who were training, drafted her 100th expungement petition. She's better than a lot of associates I've worked with throughout my career. She doesn't have legal training. She cares. She's passionate and smart. She's a former student at the university. She's a good writer and has good attention to detail. It's not legally complex. It's the same thing over and over. You absolutely can train a non-lawyer to do some of those things. We have to because we know that 75% of people who represent themselves in expungement proceedings never make it through the process. That's tragic. You can get a lawyer, only if you have $2,000 to $3,000, then we only allow second chances to people with money. That's not fair.
That was a great summary of how that works and where some of the legal changes are and how that all fits together. That was very helpful because you and I know what we're talking about in terms of all of these but the audience might not.
These kinds of stories and examples hopefully will move the discussion forward. Utah was the first state to tackle reg reform in a big way with the sandbox. People are so worried about consumer harm, and that's the narrative in California. It is like, “If we open this up to non-lawyers and computers, people are going to get terrible advice, and they're going to be worse off.” Our examples show that that's not the case. You can deliver cheaper services and you can use technology and non-lawyers to provide high-quality legal representation.
Lawyers are worried. They have a monopoly on the profession. Without counter-examples, it's easy to get caught up that there's going to be wide-scale harm to the consumer unless you have like, “That's not happening with this business or in Utah or this one.” There is a way to do it. It does need to be regulated. We do need rules and reporting, and we're subject to all of those requirements. There is a way to deliver affordable legal services to the consumer in a way that they are getting the same high-quality legal representation. Our team has handled thousands of these expungement matters. We know what we're doing and we have lawyers on staff. It's not like we don't have any lawyers.
The point is to move this reg reform conversation forward across the United States, we need companies like Rasa and Stacy Butler and all the work that she is doing with Innovation For Justice to show that there are ways to do this. The future of law must take some of these principles into account and provide options for people whose lives are affected every day because the stakes are high.
If you have a lawyer, you can get a job or you can be stably housed but if you don't, you won't. That impacts so many human lives. People lose custody of their kids. People get evicted all because they're self-represented because they can't afford representation. The multitude of issues that courts address and how helpful this innovative thinking and relaxation of the rules in a way that's safe for consumers can do for the future of law is exciting to me. I know a whole counter-argument out there. I think examples of success for people receiving legal services will help a tremendous amount in changing the narrative around reg reform.
My views of the sandboxes are it’s helpful to exactly do that. It's hard to study and figure out how things might work. It gives you an opportunity to see what works if it works, and some of the concerns which are shared by both public interest law firms and other for-profit law firms in California, in particular. What does that look like? How does it work? Are there other guard rails and safety aspects? That's the value of the nationwide discussion of the Utah and Arizona work. You have things to look at and assess. This has been great. I've enjoyed our discussion, how wide-ranging your mind is, and how thoughtful you are about all of the different impactful issues that we've addressed so far in your career and that you continue to address. It has been a joy. I appreciate learning from you.
It has been a delight to get to know you better. I’m such a big fan of the work that you're doing with this show and the way that you're presenting different options to people in law school. I think this reg reform discussion should start in law schools. The people in law school need to be learning about how the justice system is failing people and see access to justice as a priority, and present some of those arguments and perspectives to people who are going into law and people who are considering law school.
If we want people to have diverse opportunities and be successful, we need to help lawyers develop management skills.
It is going to bring entrepreneurs into the pipeline. It is going to bring people similar to my twenty-year-old self who want to change the world, who want to go into law to change the law and build a better future for people. It's going to help them to know what's possible. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for being willing to have me and my journey on the show. I appreciate it and I loved the conversation.
Thank you so much. I’ve got a couple of closing questions. I do a few lightning rounds. I’m going to do a couple. I think that's a great way to end this discussion. One question, which talent would you most like to have but don't have?
I wish now that I’m an entrepreneur that I had gone to business school and learned about fundraising and marketing startups. I’m developing some of those skills. I’m always learning, but now that I’m running a company and I’m in charge of all the things, I wish I had that expertise because it would be beneficial. I have a great team who's supplementing but I wish I knew more about that.
That goes in you're always learning and always growing category. Some of those things are academic, but you need real-life experience. Unfortunately, the only way you can do it is to try, iterate, and try again. Real-time and real-life experiences are the best ways we have to learn, pick up, and start over again.
It's so fun owning a business and engaging in this experimentation, testing these different messages, and seeing why somebody acts a particular way in response to X message. I love it but I’m learning, and it's also hard to be learning and doing at the same time.
It's definitely challenging in that regard. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?
Probably Barack Obama. I’m such an admirer of his and I’m sure he's on a lot of people's lists. He also strikes me as such a genuine human being. He’s a smart guy and has had an amazing legal career. I would love to meet his whole family. I admire him as a human coming from the background that he did, the amazing things he has been able to do for this country to unify people and to believe in change. Probably him, although there are so many amazing people in the world that I would like to meet and learn from.
Last question. What is your motto if you have one?
Let me think about it. What is my motto? It's so hard. I have to develop a better motto.
I’ll tell you what I think and what I see that came to my brain when I was thinking. That was “Always be growing.”
I like that. Always be growing and never give up. That’s what I would add. I've had a lot of people tell me throughout my career at many points, “You can't do this. This is impossible. You’ll never be able to achieve this. This is too hard.” I feel like part of my success is curiosity. It's growth but it's also being relentless and sometimes saying, “I know you don't believe it's possible but I do.”
It is this continuous growth but it's also never giving up and keeping focused on what is important to you from the beginning. I feel like had I done that earlier as a lawyer and had I not gotten caught up in this firm stuff and other people's definition of success. I'm grateful for the training but never forget who you want to be and the change that you want to contribute to the world because that's what's going to make you happy. Sorry, that's lots of mottoes.
That was terrific. That’s exactly where I thought it was going to go. It is excellent. All of those are good definitions. Each of us is defining our own definition of success. That's important because a lot of people, especially in law school, were told there's a certain path that equals success. Part of the joy in life is having meaning in not success for yourself. Not giving that up in the context of there's only one path. I don't think that's true either. There are so many paths and there are different ways we can contribute through legal training. That's part of why I wanted to talk to you as well. I enjoyed this so much. I'm certain that the audience will learn a lot as well and discover how both charming and effective you are.
Thank you so much. I loved talking with you. I’m so excited to tune in to some of the episodes and introduce you to some other amazing mentors and women here in Utah and other states who have done amazing things with their legal careers. My brain is going.
I can see it's working. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.