If you have not had your criminal record expunged, it can be easy to be skeptical. Hearing how expungement dramatically changed other people's lives might show how powerful of a tool it can be under Washington state law. Even if you were charged decades ago, just...
Protecting Your Future With Compassion And Understanding
Expungement
Is expunging your criminal record too expensive?
Dealing with the law in Washington State tends not to be cheap. To solve a legal problem, you are probably going to have to spend some money. If you look at these expenses as an investment in your future, the bills might not seem so onerous. This includes expunging...
What keeps people from pursuing expungement?
In this blog, we often discuss the expungement of criminal convictions and how getting your record expunged can feel like a second chance at living the life you want. But not everyone who is eligible to request an expungement actually does so. Over in Montana, voters...
Expunging vs. Sealing your Criminal Record: What’s the difference?
Expungement and record sealing seem pretty much the same at first. Both of them refer to shielding your criminal record from background checks. Both of them require you to go through a legal process, usually several years after you finish serving your sentence. And...
Would Automatic Expungement be Right for Washington State?
Washington State gives people with criminal records the chance to expunge their records, giving them the opportunity to put an old conviction behind them so it no longer holds them back. But the process is complicated, and many eligible people are intimidated or...
What can I get removed from a Washington state criminal record?
In many cases, the secondary consequences of a criminal conviction can far outweigh the original punishment. Long after you’ve paid your fines or served your time, a conviction on your record may limit where you can live, work and volunteer. Because convictions can...
How much difference does an expungement make?
If you have ever been convicted of a crime, you probably realize your punishment didn’t end when everyone else thought it did. Convictions come with long-lasting secondary effects. They may limit your rights, and they can hurt your chances for good-paying jobs. How...
2020 wasn’t all bad: Cannabis possession arrests dropped precipitously
The pain of the pandemic and the economic slowdown it caused have ensured that 2020 will be remembered as a historically bad year, but it did have one or two bright spots. One of those bright spots is found in the recently released FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which...