If you are looking for a Utah lawyer to help clear your record, you’re in the right place! Hollee is Utah’s Legal Director and is one of the most experienced and successful record clearance lawyers in the entire state. Hollee has been practicing law for more than 20 years and has successfully helped thousands of people expunge their records in Utah. Her years of experience give her a close view of the challenges and opportunities that come with record clearance. In this interview, she shares her background, insights, and advice for people considering expungement.
Experience and Success in Record Clearance
Hollee is a record clearance expert. For nearly a decade, Hollee has focused her practice exclusively on expungements and offense reductions, handling thousands of cases across Utah. This specialized experience shapes the way she practices today and gives clients confidence that their cases are in capable hands.
Q: Can you share your experience as a Utah lawyer and the number of expungement cases you’ve worked on?
A: I graduated from law school in 2002 and started working in expungements in about 2015. I have worked primarily in expungements and reductions since that time. I have lost count of how many total expungements I have obtained for my clients, but it is several thousand at this point.
Q: What is your general success rate with expungement cases, and what contributes to those results?
A: Our success rate is very high, more than 90% of cases get granted. This is in part because my experience allows me to recognize the odds of success or what steps should be taken to increase the likelihood of success. Many people have been told they have no path forward to expungement, but I have been able to obtain offense reductions that get them to a place of eligibility. If someone is not likely to succeed, I believe in being forthright about their chances so they can decide whether they want to proceed.
Q: What makes you stand out when it comes to record clearance work?
A: Over the last decade, I have represented thousands of people. The volume of reductions and expungements I have handled as a Utah lawyer allows me to better analyze what we need to do to increase our odds of success. I also have a rich background as a legal aid lawyer and have spent decades assisting clients improve their lives.
Common Roadblocks a Utah Lawyer Helps Clients Overcome
People who try to clear a record in Utah often face a complicated process that takes longer than they expect. In this section, Hollee explains common challenges people face when they are clearing their Utah records.
Q: What are some common challenges or complexities in the record clearing process that the average person doesn’t expect?
A: One common frustration is the complexity and length of time the process may take. In Utah, many people are told they are not eligible and give up hope. But many people, particularly those with older records, actually have a pathway to becoming eligible through an offense reduction. This can be tricky for a non-lawyer to determine, but life-changing for someone who is eligible.
Once eligible, a person must apply to BCI before beginning the expungement process with the courts. Waiting for BCI can take 3 months or longer, and the court process can also take a long time. While it is not a quick process, it is well worth the wait as obtaining an expungement allows you to answer questions about your record as if the incident did not occur. This helps a person increase their wages, get a new job, obtain better housing, and pursue other opportunities in life. .
Q: Why do you believe it is important to work with a Utah lawyer when expunging a record?
A: Figuring out whether you qualify for expungement is very complicated. A person may or may not qualify but is not likely to know exactly why. This is because eligibility is based not just on the age of a person’s criminal record, but the types of offenses, level of offenses, outcome of the cases, and other factors. If a person receives a denial from BCI, a person without an attorney will not be able to assess why that is or if they can take any measures to appeal or avoid that outcome.
Once past the BCI phase, a person may not know how to prepare or file the proper documents with the court. If a person has multiple cases, they will need to juggle cases across different courts with different processes. Also, they may get an objection from a victim or prosecutor and may not know how to proceed. Even once the expungement is granted, a person may not know how to ensure that the case is actually sealed and won’t appear unexpectedly in the future.
The Role of Technology in Modern Legal Practice
Technology is reshaping legal work, and it also changes how people clear their records. Here, Hollee explains how the right tools help her as Rasa’s Utah lawyer work faster and serve more people.
Q: As a Utah lawyer, what evidence have you seen that technology helps record clearance?
A: Utah’s Automatic Expungement can offer huge benefits to those who are eligible, especially when the process is truly “automatic.” Under Utah’s Clean Slate law, the state has developed an algorithm to find and analyze eligible cases, and clear them without any action from the individual. However, due to the backlog of work, the automatic expungement program is paused until 2026. In addition, automatic expungement is more limited, as it applies only to court and BCI records, but not other agencies like the jail or police.
We are able to use technology to our advantage to make case preparation faster and easier. For the first several years of practicing in expungements, I was manually creating tables and spreadsheets of a person’s record to determine if they were eligible for expungement, and if not, how we could help them become eligible. I was also manually drafting all court documents to obtain the expungement. Now, technology has come so far that I can assess a person’s record and draft documents much more quickly to ensure we are faster than ever.
Q: Is it really better to have lawyers who integrate technology into their practice? If so, why?
A: Technology makes my work so much more efficient and we are able to accomplish much more in the same amount of time. That allows us to help many more people than would have been possible in the past. It also allows us to offer high quality legal expungement and offense reduction services for prices people can afford.
Guidance for People Starting Their Record Clearing Journey
Beginning the record clearance journey comes with many questions and uncertainties. We asked Hollee what advice she would give to people thinking about expungement.
Q: What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their record clearance process?
A: Please be careful when beginning this process on your own. There are pitfalls that may not be known to you that can make record clearance much more difficult. There also may be factors regarding your eligibility that you may not be aware of which could result in negative outcomes. Also, if you do obtain an expungement, please be sure the orders are processed correctly and obtain a BCI report to confirm that nothing appears on your record at the end.
As a Utah lawyer, Hollee uses both her expertise and technology to expand access to record clearance. If you’d like to work with Hollee and the rest of our dedicated team, we make the process simple and affordable. The first step is to use our eligibility tool to see what is on your record and whether it is eligible for expungement. Start now!
