A Free Webinar Presented by Community Legal Services of Philadelphia through the National Record Clearing Project, with funding from the WK Kellogg Foundation Description: In the past two years we have seen two pioneering studies about record clearing: J.J. Prescott and Sonja Starr’s “Expungement of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study” (March 2019, Harvard Law Review) and Colleen Chien’s “America's Paper Prisons: The Second Chance Gap” (December 2020, Michigan Law Review). These papers have changed the way advocates talk about record clearing by answering questions like: • How many people qualify for record relief but have not accessed it? • What is the “second chance gap,” and why does it exist? • Does record clearing lead to higher wages? To more crime? • What can we do to increase access to record clearing? What barriers must be addressed? J.J. Prescott and Colleen Chien will answer these questions and more as they discuss their research in our upcoming webinar on Friday, March 26 at 2 PM. Rebecca Vallas will show us how this research can be leveraged by advocates to better represent clients and to achieve record clearing progress. Presenters: • J.J. Prescott, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School • Colleen Chien, Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law • Rebecca Vallas, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress