Every journey begins with a step
This journey began with a collective step. A few of us were volunteers for a group called Code for KC. Code for KC was a local “brigade” of a national organization - Code for America. The volunteers met on Monday nights from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM to work on software projects for government agencies and nonprofit organizations, and to learn. We tossed around the idea of working on an app to help people expunge criminal convictions. About the same time, Dean Emeritus Ellen Suni of the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law, who was also a member of the board of Code for KC’s parent organization—KC Digital Drive—wanted to explore how the law school might promote expungements under a new law that was set to take effect in Missouri on January 1, 2018. In a collaboration with Dean Suni, Code for KC members Paul Barham, the Captain of Code for KC, and Scott Stockwell, an attorney from Lawrence, Kansas, volunteered as subject matter experts for the Law, Technology, and Public Policy course in the Fall of 2017. The class continued for several semesters and resulted in a large grant program to promote expungement in Missouri that is still underway.
Skip forward to 2021, when KC Digital Drive/Code for KC received a modest grant from LISC to develop an app for Kansas expungement. Kansas Legal Services and the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office were our development partners. Scott had participated in an expungement clinic put on by Kansas Legal Services and the Wyandotte County DA’s office, met Christine Campbell of KLS and Claire Kibideaux of the DA’s Office, and the connection was made. A prototype of the Kansas Expungement Project’s app was created. Soon, the app was being used at KLS expungement clinics across the state. In the last three years, the Kansas Expungement App has been used in about 30 expungement clinics to prepare over 1,800 expungement applications for about 1,000 applicants. The app presents a guided interview that completes in 30 minutes what would have taken an experienced attorney three hours to complete. And because the law and process are designed into the app, volunteer KLS attorneys who have no previous criminal experience can help more people, in more places, in less time.
In 2024, the Kansas Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Grant program approved a KC Digital Drive proposal. The proposal had two main parts: To recode the expungement application for a version 2.0, and to create an app for self-help, legal aid clinics, and private attorneys to draft the necessary documents to petition the court to establish a guardianship or conservatorship for a person in need. That is where you are reading this post now. We are still in process. It is a lot of work. It is hard to make something complex simple. But it is possible. And, as you can see, we are persistent.
