Doing It Yourself vs. Hiring Us — an Honest Comparison

The Department of Justice is building the application to be usable by ordinary people, with a proposed $20 filing fee. Plenty of applicants will file on their own, and some should. Here's our honest take on who benefits from counsel and who doesn't.

You can likely handle it yourself if…

• You have a single conviction, in the county where you still live, from a court whose records are online or easily obtained
• You've lived in one state your whole life
• You're comfortable requesting certified documents, getting fingerprinted, and asking three people to write sworn affidavits
• Your history has nothing the proposed rule treats as presumptively disqualifying

Counsel earns its fee when…

• Your conviction is decades old and the court file is archived, microfilmed, or partially lost
• You've lived in several states — each with its own records agency, form, and turnaround time
• There are multiple convictions, or anything that puts you near a presumptive-denial category, where the “extraordinary circumstances” argument must be built carefully or not attempted at all
• The personal statement matters — a sworn narrative that is honest, complete, and does not accidentally contradict the record
• You want it ready on day one, filed early in an expected million-application queue, and tracked afterward

One more thing worth saying plainly: a bad application is not free. Misstatements in a sworn federal filing carry real risk, and an incomplete or contradicted application invites denial on a record that follows you into any future attempt. Whichever way you go — go carefully.