Emma Goodman is a staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society. She began her career as a public defender in Manhattan, where she witnessed firsthand the injustices of the criminal system and the perpetual punishment suffered by people with criminal records. When New York’s application-based criminal record sealing law went into effect in October 2017, Emma created the Case Closed Project, an initiative that provides direct representation in sealing cases and pushes for broad legal reform through affirmative litigation, legislative advocacy, and community engagement.
Emma believes automatic record clearance laws are a key tool to combat poverty and address racial injustice in the criminal system. She played a key role in getting automatic expungement written into law in New York, which has led to more than 700,000 cases being expunged statewide. She was also a founding member of the Clean Slate NY campaign, which successfully fought for passage of the groundbreaking Clean Slate Act, a new law that will automatically seal more than 2.3 million records in New York. She has conducted statewide and national trainings on record clearance issues and continues to push for broader legal reforms.