Rasa Legal raises $5 million to expand its technology platform helping Americans clear criminal records. Founded by Noella Sudbury, the company uses AI and legal expertise to unlock workforce access, reduce barriers, and scale nationally.
South Salt Lake, Utah — November 11, 2026
For tens of millions of Americans, a background check can quietly shut the door on opportunity.
Employment, housing, professional licenses, even volunteering at a child’s school often require one. A past criminal record, even from decades earlier, can trigger automatic rejection before a person ever has the chance to explain who they are today.
That dynamic affects far more people than most realize. Roughly one in three Americans, nearly 100 million people, have some form of criminal record, a statistic that has profound consequences for the U.S. workforce.
“Background checks run the world,” said Noella Sudbury.
Sudbury is the founder of Rasa Legal, a South Salt Lake, Utah-based startup building software designed to help people clear eligible criminal records and access new opportunities. This week, the company announced it has raised $5 million in a late seed funding round to expand its platform nationally.
The round was led by Rethink Education (White Plains, NY) with participation from Social Finance (Boston, MA), Halogen Ventures (Santa Monica, CA) and the Richard King Mellon Foundation (Pittsburgh, PA), among others.
The new capital will allow Rasa to expand its leadership team, accelerate product development and enter additional states as it works toward a national footprint.
But Sudbury says the company’s mission is often misunderstood.
“This is not criminal justice reform,” she shared with TechBuzz. “This is investing in jobs. This is investing in talent. This is investing in a future workforce that right now, because of criminal records, is being left behind.”
A hidden workforce problem
Criminal records can follow people for years after their interaction with the justice system ends. Even minor offenses can appear in background checks indefinitely, creating barriers to employment, housing and education.
Many people are legally eligible to seal or expunge those records under state law, but navigating the legal process is complex and often expensive.
Sudbury saw that problem firsthand while working as a public defender.
Later, she helped lead Utah’s successful Clean Slate campaign, which created automated record-clearance relief for more than 500,000 residents.
But she realized that policy reform alone wouldn’t solve the issue nationwide.
“I started this company with the dream of building an app that could help people clear their criminal records and access new opportunities in life,” Sudbury said.
As covered by TechBuzz, Rasa Legal launched its platform in 2022 with the goal of simplifying the record-clearance process through technology while still providing legal support from licensed attorneys.
The platform analyzes a user’s criminal record and determines whether they may be eligible for sealing or expungement under state law. From there, Rasa’s lawyers guide the case through the legal process.
Since launch, more than 27,000 people have used the platform to review their records and eligibility, and more than 5,000 cases have been successfully cleared, Sudbury shared with TechBuzz.
For many users, the motivation is straightforward.
“Over 90% of the people who come to our platform say the main reason they want to clear their criminal record is to get a better employment opportunity,” Sudbury said.
A technology platform for legal processes
While record clearance laws vary widely from state to state, Sudbury says the underlying legal process is remarkably consistent.
First, a person’s eligibility must be determined. Then legal paperwork is prepared and filed with the court. Prosecutors and victims have an opportunity to respond, and a judge ultimately decides whether clearing the record serves the public interest.
That workflow lends itself well to software automation.
“What is common is the process,” Sudbury said.
Rasa’s platform codifies those steps, turning legal rules into software logic that can determine eligibility and generate the required filings.
Artificial intelligence has also played a growing role in accelerating development.
AI tools can generate early drafts of code and legal documents, allowing engineers and lawyers to review and refine the results rather than starting from scratch.
“AI can kind of do that first draft,” Sudbury said. “Then our engineers and lawyers review it and test it.”
That approach significantly shortens development timelines when the company expands into new states.
What might once have taken a year to build can now be done in a matter of months.
Expanding beyond Utah
Rasa initially launched in Utah before expanding into Arizona and Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania launch, which began in December with an initial focus on Pittsburgh, has already attracted significant interest.
Within just a few months, more than 1,000 users in the Keystone State have joined the platform.
Expansion into Pennsylvania also helped attract support from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, which works to strengthen economic opportunity across the region.
Sudbury says the company now wants to accelerate its geographic growth.
Rasa’s goal is to operate in roughly 20 states by 2030, which would mean entering about one new state every quarter.
Achieving that pace will require both technical and organizational scaling.
“We have product-market fit,” Sudbury said. “We know how to deliver high-quality legal services. Now it’s about building the team and infrastructure to scale nationally.”
The new funding will help Rasa hire software engineers, expand automation capabilities and build out leadership in operations, marketing and finance.
Currently, Sudbury and the company’s chief technology officer lead a relatively small core team.
“That’s great when you’re proving the model,” she said. “But now we need a national team to grow partnerships and scale the impact.”
Changing the meaning of the background check
As Rasa expands, Sudbury says partnerships with governments and workforce agencies could dramatically increase the platform’s reach. One example is the company’s integration with the Utah Department of Workforce Services. Job seekers visiting workforce offices are now asked whether they have a criminal record that might be preventing them from getting hired. If they do, they can be directed to Rasa’s platform to determine whether their record can be cleared.
In Utah, this can include pursuing a 402 reduction, also called an offense reduction, which lowers the severity of a conviction without erasing the record. By reducing a crime’s degree or class, users may improve their eligibility for jobs, housing, and even expungement, helping open doors that were previously blocked.
The shift may seem small, but Sudbury believes it represents a fundamental change in how society approaches criminal records.
Historically, the question about a record was asked to exclude people from opportunities.
Now it can be asked to help them regain access.
“When someone asks you that question because they want to help you get a job, it’s a completely different experience,” Sudbury said.
Instead of reinforcing stigma, the conversation becomes a pathway to economic inclusion.
A growing data resource
As Rasa’s user base grows, the company is also building a unique dataset about the challenges facing people with criminal records.
Users voluntarily provide demographic information along with details about their work history, education level and career goals.
The patterns emerging from that data are already revealing.
One of the clearest findings so far is the strong desire for employment among people seeking record clearance.
“More than 90% say they’re doing this because they want better employment opportunities,” Sudbury said.
That insight challenges common stereotypes that people with criminal records are unwilling to work.
“The people we talk to every day are dying to work,” she said.
Many have applied to dozens or even hundreds of jobs before realizing their background check is preventing them from moving forward.
As Rasa expands to additional states, the company expects the dataset to grow dramatically.
Sudbury believes those insights could eventually help policymakers better understand the relationship between criminal records, poverty and workforce participation.
“If you could analyze millions of stories like that,” she said, “what could we learn about poverty and economic mobility in America?”
From proof of concept to national scale
The latest funding round marks a turning point for Rasa Legal.
After several years proving its model in a handful of states, the company is preparing to scale its platform nationwide.
Investors say the opportunity lies not only in justice reform but in unlocking a massive segment of the workforce.
“Rasa sits at the intersection of education, workforce access and justice,” said Amy Nelson, partner at Rethink Education, in a statement announcing the investment.
By combining legal expertise with technology, Nelson said, the company is building infrastructure that removes barriers to employment and economic mobility.
For Sudbury, the long-term vision is simple: a future where past mistakes no longer permanently block people from contributing to the economy.
“There are millions of people who want to work and support their families,” she said. “If we can remove that barrier, we create opportunity not just for them, but for employers and communities as well.”
With new funding and growing momentum, Rasa Legal is now aiming to do that at national scale.
Learn more at rasa-legal.com.