Global Legal Hackathon team creates tool to help clear Californians’ marijuana convictions

It’s like ‘Turbotax for expungements,’ explains LA hackathon participants of their bot-powered tool

In 2016, California passed Proposition 64, which not only legalizes the recreational use of marijuana but allows individuals to clear their records of marijuana-related convictions. The catch? Eligible individuals have to file petitions with the court, which can sometimes be a confusing (or an expensive) process.

Fortunately, Global Legal Hackathon participants in Los Angeles came up with Clear My MJ, a tool that helps individuals file for an expungement by guiding them through a series of questions.

Clear My MJ is the brainchild of Team HelpSelf, consisting of legal entrepreneur Dorna Moini and University of Southern California (USC) Law student Aram Ekimyan. They call their tool “TurboTax for expungements.”

Inspired by USC Law Professor Gillian Hadfield to address access to justice issues, Team HelpSelf sees Clear My MJ as “a crucial tool to solving our country’s access to justice gap.”

“Our guided interview can be done on web, mobile or by SMS messaging, and issues the documents that need to be filed for an expungement,” the team explains. Their API also enables the tool to “file and serve documents so our users don’t have to take time off work, pay for transportation, or navigate another confusing part of the legal system.”

A USC Law graduate herself, Moini founded the legal technology company HelpSelf Legal, which helps generate restraining orders for individuals who need them quickly. “We use technology to help bridge the justice gap,” says Moini.

Moini’s company just released a bot-creator that “enables anyone to create a TurboTax-like platform for documents in their area of law.”

The timing was perfect for Moini. “When I heard about GLH, I thought it would be a great place to use our bot infrastructure to tackle a legal problem over a weekend.”

On April 21, Team HelpSelf will face off against the rest of the GLH for the last round of the hackathon in New York! (You can watch the final round in person by attending the Global Legal Hackathon Gala.)

We spoke to Moini about her hackathon experience and the technology infrastructure that powers Clear My MJ. Here’s what she told us.

How did you and your hackathon teammate meet each other?

My teammate Aram Ekimyan is a USC Law student who had great insights from his studies at the Legal Design Lab there. Aram and I were introduced by Professors Hadfield and Ryan. They told me that Aram had expressed interest in working on the same idea, so we teamed up.

Why did you decide to build a tool that addresses California’s Prop 64?

Because #HadfieldChallenges! Professor Hadfield, who was my professor when I was a student at USC Law, heads the Legal Design Lab there with Professor Dan Ryan. She published a list of legal issues where technology is needed. Since my coding skills are minimal, I picked the one that could be built completely on HelpSelf’s platform and that would help the most people. Record clearing (especially here, where the activity isn’t even illegal anymore) is a crucial step toward a fairer US justice system.

Your team used the software underlying your legal tech service, HelpSelf, to create Clear My MJ, right? What exactly is the underlying tech?

HelpSelf’s tool is essentially a bot-creator. You upload the documents (Word and/or PDF) that you want to automate. Then, you create the interview questions you want the bot to ask. You can publish the interview for anyone to use, and no engineering experience is necessary. It took just a few hours to build the first working version of the tool.

What has been the biggest challenge for your team while creating and launching Clear My MJ?

The toughest part was tempering our eagerness and global prospects for this tool. We knew we had to focus on one jurisdiction and one type of record-clearing to get actionable feedback, and we’re excited to expand this into a more comprehensive tool for more jurisdictions and records.

And did you have any epiphanies or ‘aha’ moments during the process?

Our ‘aha’ moments came when we started user-testing with real people and handing the tools off to experts in this area of law. They provided invaluable feedback on how they wanted the interview to work.

HelpSelf now offers users help with restraining orders, but it looks like you have a lot on the docket for services you plan to offer — from help with evictions to requesting child support. How close are you to offering these services and what’s next for HelpSelf?

We just launched our bot infrastructure, which is helping us prepare these services at a speedy clip. After we launched our restraining order tool, we had a massive response from legal aid orgs across the world. They all wanted something similar in their jurisdictions, but our engineering team at HelpSelf was still too small to help them all.

So we worked hard and fast on our bot-creator. We now have legal aid orgs, law firms, and businesses creating their own interviews on our platform, without an engineer. Some use these for internal processes, and others are posting them for public use on their websites. As far as direct services, at HelpSelf, we’ve partnered with experts in different areas of law, and we’ll be releasing a few other tools directly on our site in the near future.

Lawyers who want to close the justice gap (or even just help streamline their own work) using our bot infrastructure should email us at accounts@helpselflegal.com.

Will you and your team continue to work on Clear My MJ after the hackathon?

Definitely. We’ll be going live with Clear My MJ next week on HelpSelf’s site, at which point individuals can easily prepare their petitions/applications for resentencing/reclassification through our site.

We’ve solicited and incorporated feedback from the Drug Policy Alliance and public defenders across the state, so we know it’s a quality, comprehensive product. (Also, the Spanish version is coming soon!)

Our user-testing so far shows that it’s a product that people need, that the user experience on web and mobile is seamless. The only remaining obstacle is getting the word out.

Visit HelpSelf.com to access Clear My MJ and learn more about their services. To watch the team compete in the final round, join us for the Global Legal Hackathon Gala, April 21, in New York City — for tickets and more information click here.