2024 Fellow

Noella Sudbury
Rasa Legal

Website
https://www.rasa-legal.com

Personal Bio

Noella graduated from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in 2009 and has already had a full and diverse career.

Following a clerkship for the Honorable Ronald Nehring of the Utah Supreme Court, she began her legal practice as a public defender, where she quickly developed a passion for criminal justice reform.
In 2016, Noella was appointed by the Salt Lake County Council as the Director of the Criminal Justice Advisory Council for the County, and in that role, led the successful bipartisan legislative campaign to pass Utah’s Clean Slate law--a new law that automates the criminal record expungement process for more than 450,000 Utahns.

Noella went on to found Clean Slate Utah, a non-profit to raise awareness of the automatic clearance law, and is the current CEO and Founder of Rasa Public Benefit Corporation, a new legal tech company that provides low-cost legal expungement services to people not eligible for automatic record clearance.
In 2022, she was selected to receive the Distinguished Service Award by the Utah State Bar. In 2023, she was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 200 most dynamic female founders in America.

Project Description

The justice system is broken all across America. Research shows that 85% of people in the United States who need a lawyer to help them cannot afford to hire one.

Rasa is a mission-driven company that is trying to repair the harms of the criminal justice system, address the access to justice crisis, and show the world that our legal system can do better. Our company is on a mission to make the process of clearing a criminal record simple and affordable for everyone.
By using computer software to bridge the access to justice gap, we believe we can create more racial and ethnic equality, economic opportunity for working class Americans, and a more equitable future for low-income children and families.