What made you want to do the work you do? Please share the full story.
I spent my early years as a public defender in Miami-Dade, and I kept seeing the same pattern. Someone would get arrested, the case would get dropped or dismissed months later, and the person would think that was the end of it. Then a year later they’d lose a job offer or an apartment because the arrest still showed up on a background check, even though they were never convicted of anything. That gap between what the law says should happen and what actually happens to people’s lives is what pulled me toward expungement work.
There was one case in particular, a client whose charges were dropped within weeks, who still couldn’t get approved for a lease two years later because the arrest record was sitting on a data broker site nobody had cleaned up. That’s when I realized expungement isn’t just a legal filing, it’s the difference between someone rebuilding their life or staying stuck because of a record that was never supposed to follow them. I built Erase The Case around fixing that entire footprint, not just the court file.
Tell us 3 surprisingly easy and 3 surprisingly difficult things about your business.
Surprisingly easy: getting a judge to approve a clean, well-documented petition once eligibility is confirmed, since Florida’s statute is actually specific about who qualifies. Explaining eligibility to a client in a first call is also easier than people expect, most cases are a clear yes or no within minutes once I know the charge and disposition. And building relationships with the clerk’s offices across different counties turned out to be far more straightforward than the horror stories suggest, most clerks just want the paperwork filed correctly.
Surprisingly difficult: getting private background check companies to actually remove data after a court order, since they aren’t automatically notified and some ignore takedown requests for months. Coordinating an expungement across multiple counties when someone has cases scattered across the state is also far messier than people assume. And convincing clients that a mugshot still sitting on a search engine three years after their case closed can matter just as much as the court record itself, most people don’t think about that until it costs them a job.
What are the 3 things you like best about your work and why?
The moment a client gets their expungement order and realizes they can legally say the arrest never happened is the best part of this job, because it’s the first time in years some of them feel like the record isn’t hanging over every application they fill out. I also like that this work is narrow enough to actually master, I don’t split my time across DUI defense or family law, so I can go deep on one area of Florida statute and know it cold.
The third thing is watching the full picture come together, court record sealed, FDLE database updated, mugshot pulled down, background check companies notified. Most attorneys stop at the court order. Following it all the way through to the background check companies is where the actual life change happens for the client, not just the legal formality.
What are your greatest 3 skills and how have they helped you succeed?
The first is knowing Florida Statute 943.0585 and its exceptions well enough to spot eligibility issues other attorneys miss, which is why my firm can move a case in 3 to 5 months instead of the statewide average of 7 to 12. The second is negotiation, specifically with data brokers and background check companies who have zero legal obligation to move fast, getting them to act requires persistence and knowing exactly which department to push.
The third is translating legal outcomes into plain language for clients who are often anxious and confused about what an expungement actually changes in their daily life. Being a former public defender trained me to explain complicated procedure to people under stress, and that skill matters just as much in this work as courtroom strategy does.
Tell us about a time you were dead wrong about something.
Early on I assumed that once a judge signed an expungement order, the client’s record was effectively clean everywhere. I told a client that, confidently, and a few months later she called me upset because a background check for a new job still flagged the old arrest. I had to explain that the court order only controls the official government record, private data brokers and background check companies run on their own timelines and often ignore court orders unless someone forces the issue.
That mistake changed how I built my entire practice. I stopped treating the court order as the finish line and started treating it as step one. Now every case includes direct follow-up with background check companies and mugshot sites, because I learned the hard way that being technically right about the law doesn’t mean the client’s actual life reflects it.
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
Answer: The hardest part of most days is dealing with data brokers and background check companies who have no legal deadline to comply with a removal request. A court can order an expungement in weeks, but getting a private company to actually update their database can take months of follow-up calls and emails, and there’s no judge to hold them accountable in the meantime.
I handle it by treating that follow-up as its own workflow, not an afterthought tacked onto the court filing. My team tracks every request by company, resend date, and response status, so nothing sits untouched for weeks. It’s tedious work, but persistence is really the only lever that moves these companies, so I built systems around persistence instead of hoping it happens on its own.
What do you value most and why?
I value follow-through more than almost anything else in this work, because a half-finished expungement can be worse than no expungement at all. If a client thinks their record is clear but a mugshot is still sitting on Google, they walk into job interviews with false confidence and get blindsided. Finishing the job completely, court record, state database, background check companies, mugshot sites, is what actually protects someone.
That value comes directly from my time as a public defender, where I saw how often the system left people halfway fixed. A dismissed case that still shows up on a background check is a broken promise from the legal system. I built my firm to close that gap fully, not just legally but practically, because a record that’s “sealed” on paper but still visible everywhere else isn’t a second chance, it’s a technicality.
What achievement are you the proudest of and why?
I’m proudest of building the fastest expungement turnaround record in the state, a case resolved in 70 days when the statewide average sits at 7 to 12 months. That speed isn’t a gimmick, it’s the result of specializing in one narrow area of law until I could spot eligibility issues and procedural shortcuts that a general criminal defense attorney handling expungements as a side practice would never catch.
But the number that actually means more to me is the volume, over 2,000 cases sealed or expunged since 2019 across all 67 Florida counties. Each one of those is someone who applied for a job, a lease, or a loan without an old arrest working against them. Scaling that kind of impact statewide, while still handling the messy parts most firms skip like mugshot removal, is what I set out to do when I left public defense work to start this firm.
What is your favorite movie and why?
My favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption. It’s an obvious pick for someone in criminal justice work, but the reason it sticks with me isn’t the prison setting, it’s the theme of a system that grinds people down long after their sentence is technically served. Andy Dufresne spends the whole film fighting to be seen as more than the worst thing that happened to him, and that’s the exact fight my clients face every day with a record that follows them years after their case closed.
The other reason it resonates is the patience the story requires. Real change, whether it’s escaping through a wall over two decades or rebuilding a life after an arrest, rarely happens fast. It happens through steady, unglamorous effort that nobody sees until the result shows up.
What advice would you give to your younger self and why?
I’d tell myself to specialize sooner. I spent years as a public defender and later as a general practitioner before I fully committed to expungement law exclusively, and looking back, the moment I went all in was the moment my practice actually started solving problems well instead of adequately. Trying to be competent across several areas of criminal law meant I was never the best option for any single one of them.
Depth beats breadth in legal work, especially in a niche as specific as Florida expungement statutes. Once I stopped splitting my attention, I could catch eligibility nuances and procedural shortcuts that a general practitioner handling expungement as a side service would simply miss. I’d tell my younger self that narrowing his focus wasn’t a risk, it was the actual path to being useful.
Who has been your biggest mentor in life (personal or professional) and how have they helped you?
My time at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office shaped me more than any single mentor, but if I had to point to the influence that stuck with me most, it was watching senior defenders manage impossible caseloads without losing sight of the individual person in front of them. It would have been easy to treat each case as a file number given the volume they handled, but the best ones I worked alongside never did that.
That taught me that legal work at scale doesn’t have to mean losing the personal element, which is exactly the balance I try to strike now handling thousands of expungement cases. Every client is a case number in my system, but they’re also someone waiting to hear if they can finally get approved for the job or apartment they’ve been turned down for. I learned to hold both of those at once from watching people do it under far harder conditions than I face now.
Just for fun, what is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Coffee. It’s not flashy, but it does the job better than almost anything else on the menu, which honestly sums up my approach to law too.