After becoming a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in 2021, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox is now in the third year of an effort by firm attorneys to seal or expunge the criminal records of human trafficking survivors who have convictions or arrests connected to their victimization, with the initiative roughly doubling its work year to year.

"The laws of expunction are quite tedious and sometimes illogical, and so we had a lot of learning to do in that first year," Cox told Law360 on Friday. "But we have grown the project significantly."

The 69 charges that Kirkland's Project Second Chance team got expunged in 2023 amounted to a 123% increase from the 31 expunctions seen in 2022, according to the firm. So far this year, 132 charges have been expunged, and some petitions are still pending.

This year's efforts have been supported by a team of more than 42 lawyers, which the firm says marks a 121% increase year-over-year.

"It's a lot of documents and client meetings, but it's not highly contested in court or anything like that, so we've got both corporate [attorneys] and litigators involved, and it's a true team effort," Cox said. "Hopefully, it'll get even bigger next year, and hopefully, we can expand it to other cities."

As the number of women served grows, the team is reaching out to other law firms, general counsel from the hospitality industry and local sports teams.

During her time as a U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas from 2017 to 2021, Cox reinvigorated the office's North Texas Trafficking Task Force. Through work like this, she saw how often human trafficking and domestic violence victims had arrest records.

"As they come out of a horrible human trafficking situation, or they get disconnected from a horrible domestic violence situation, they need jobs, they need housing, they need good credit — and having arrests on your record [and] having convictions on your record can often be a big obstacle to that," she said.

The Dallas County district attorney flags cases for the Project Second Chance team, which then has five weeks to complete the administrative work needed to petition for expungement as part of the DA's Expunction Expo, an annual project to clear qualified individuals' criminal histories.

"There are other huge pro bono projects that Kirkland does that may make the papers," Cox said. "This is sort of the slow and plotting, steadfast work year after year, taking on more clients, helping them with their precise records. We just make real progress, but we make it one client at a time, and it helps to make a small difference in their life."

--Editing by Melissa Treolo.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify Project Second Chance's outreach work.