Doing It Yourself vs. Hiring Us — an Honest Comparison

The Department of Justice built the application to be usable by ordinary people, with a $30 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 and local arrest records, getting fingerprinted, and lining up three references who can sign DOJ's certification sheet
• Your history has nothing the final 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 supporting record matters — everything you attach is sworn to, and it must be honest, complete, and never accidentally contradict itself
• You want it filed the moment your window opens — the first public window (Nov 4) takes 5,000 applications nationwide — 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.