Clean Slate: Yousef Kassim's tech company helps people expunge their criminal records

Looking to give those with criminal records a second chance — including the ability to obtain housing and employment — local attorney Yousef Kassim founded Easy Expunctions. Offering a variety of packages, the San Antonio-based company expunges and seals criminal charges and scrubs records from the databases of background check and mugshot companies.

Easy Expunctions recently won the San Antonio Business Journal's Inno Madness contest, a six-round, bracket-style competition in which readers voted for their favorite startup.

More than 70 million American adults have been arrested at some point in their life, Kassim said, citing statistics from research group The Sentencing Project. And most don't know how to find out if they're eligible to expunge their criminal record or how to pursue what can be a daunting and confusing process.

With Easy Expunctions, customers pay a $19.99 fee to request an expunction eligibility report about whether they qualify. They can then choose between three packages, priced at $249 and $599, to expunge their record or clear already-expunged records from existing databases.

To make sure the opportunity is accessible to all who need it, Kassim also offers zero-interest payment plans.

"(You'll) either get that judge-signed order or you’re going to get 100% of your money back, including any filing fees to the court," Kassim said.

Kassim spent his childhood in Lake Jackson — a small town by Houston — where he grew up close to his family and surrounded by entrepreneurs. (Later, his brother Rommy would help him found Easy Expunctions.)

In 2008, he graduated from Trinity University with an undergraduate degree in finance and international business, and spent several years consulting. He then went to law school, attending St. Mary's University, where he received his J.D. in 2013.

"(I've always had a) desire for justice, that folks are treated fairly," he told the Business Journal.

He bought the web domain name for Easy Expunctions before he even started law school. Throughout law school, he kept thinking about the best way to deliver his idea via legal technology to empower litigants.

In 2013, when Kassim passed the Texas Bar exam, he thought the time was right. With the increased digitization of criminal history information – and the rapid advances in legal technology — it was an opportune moment to launch the business.

"(We were) seeing more and more TurboTax, QuickBooks, LegalZoom, RocketLawyer, the information was there," he said.

Kassim moved to Austin in 2014 and began the company there alongside brother Rommy, filing a patent for Easy Expunctions' technology. With incentives from San Antonio and Bexar County, Easy Expunctions moved its headquarters back to San Antonio in August 2016.

In 2014, Easy Expunctions became a legal entity and in 2015 started selling to customers. It closed its series A financing round in October, seeing $6.2 million in equity funding used to make key hires and grow sales, product development and market expansion.

The company began with Kassim as the first full-time employee, but today it has 24 workers. He noted that Easy Expunctions has hired four or five employees recently and is looking to hire more and expand into additional markets in the upcoming months.

Easy Expunctions provides more expunctions than any attorney in Texas, and has for years now, Kassim said. While he declined to provide specific revenue numbers, he said the company is now in a position to look at scaling nationally.

With litigants having no right in the United States to a civil attorney, it's important that affordable alternatives emerge for handling legal matters, Kassim said.

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