Yes, people can build legal careers after prison. Rodell Sanders taught himself law during 20 years of wrongful imprisonment, won acquittal in 2014, and was hired as a law clerk by the Chicago firm that represented him. His path is real but unusual, and certification rules turn on your current supervision status.
Important Note: Rodell Sanders’ story is an exceptional career transition and isn’t typical of most paralegal career paths. He was factually innocent, won a full acquittal, and had no other convictions, none of which describes most people leaving prison. This article covers his story and the rules that apply specifically to people reentering the workforce after incarceration. For the general question of how a criminal record affects paralegal hiring and certification, see our guide on whether a person with a criminal history can become a paralegal. Certification and financial aid rules current for the 2026 application cycle.
Rodell Sanders isn’t your typical paralegal. His path to a legal career began not in a university classroom but behind bars. Convicted of a 1993 Chicago Heights murder he didn’t commit, Sanders spent two decades teaching himself criminal procedure in prison law libraries, got his conviction thrown out, and walked out of a Cook County courtroom in July 2014 with a not-guilty verdict on every count.
Two months after his acquittal, Loevy & Loevy hired him. The firm had spent years fighting for his freedom. It then made him a colleague.
This article is about that story and what it does and doesn’t tell you. It’s not a general guide to paralegal hiring with a criminal record. What follows covers how Sanders actually learned law inside, what the rules say about certification when you’re still on parole or probation, and which corners of legal work treat time served as knowledge rather than a liability.
Rodell Sanders’ Journey from Prison to Paralegal
The case against him
Around 2 a.m. on December 15, 1993, two people sitting in a parked car in Chicago Heights were attacked by a group of men, robbed, and shot. Phillip Atkins died. His companion survived and gave police a description of two of the assailants.
Officers arrested Sanders in January 1994. As the Illinois Supreme Court later put it, Sanders matched neither physical description the surviving victim had given, and he had an alibi confirmed by alibi witnesses. Officers manipulated the evidence anyway. After the victim described one assailant as tall and skinny, officers altered Sanders’ photograph to make him look taller and thinner, then put that image in a photo lineup so he’d be identified. Sanders alleged the officers acted on a grudge and to protect the actual murderer, who was an important prosecution witness in other cases.
A second man arrested in the case told detectives he’d been a lookout and that Sanders ordered the shooting, then wrote a letter recanting and admitting Sanders wasn’t involved. Sanders’ trial attorney never put the recantation in front of the jury.
There was no physical evidence. Sanders was convicted in January 1995 and sentenced to 80 years.
The Chicago Heights Police Department of that era was later exposed. Police Chief Sam Mangialardi and six other officers were convicted on federal charges including civil rights violations, racketeering, witness tampering, bribery, extortion, and money laundering.
Seventeen years of his own legal work
Sanders didn’t wait for a lawyer to save him. He started studying.
“I wanted to change who I was,” Sanders said of his time inside. “I wanted to recreate myself. I started to change the way I think, and then I started changing the way I act.” He described developing a “burning desire” to study law and win his freedom.
Contemporaneous reporting described him spending as many as 12 hours a day, six days a week in the prison law library, working through criminal law and procedure. He asked his family to stop visiting so he could keep working. Using law books and the Freedom of Information Act, he built and filed the challenges to his own conviction.
On January 14, 2011, the seventeenth anniversary of the day he was locked up, that conviction was vacated and a retrial ordered.
The third trial
Winning a new trial wasn’t the end. The appellate court affirmed the vacated conviction in May 2012. Prosecutors retried Sanders in August 2013 on an added theory of accountability, and that trial ended in a mistrial. It took a third trial before a jury heard the full picture, including how the eyewitness identification had been produced.
By then Sanders had help. The Exoneration Project, a legal clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, had mounted a seven-year effort on his case, led by attorneys Gayle Horn and Russell Ainsworth and working alongside Steven Greenberg of Greenberg Ltd. After a five-day trial, at 10 p.m. on a July night in 2014, a Cook County jury found Sanders not guilty of murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery with a firearm, and armed robbery. He arrived at his sister’s house at 5:30 the next morning, surrounded by children and grandchildren he’d missed growing up. He’d served 20 years.
Loevy & Loevy hired him. Coverage at the time described the role variously as legal assistant, law clerk, and paralegal. Ainsworth told reporters that Sanders was the first client the firm had ever hired, and praised what he brought to the job. “He has an incredible eye for detail,” Ainsworth told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Whether it was his case or someone else’s, what he brings is that attention to detail. He reads every box on every police report.”
In September 2016, a federal judge approved a $15 million settlement of Sanders’ suit against Chicago Heights, one of the largest individual wrongful conviction payouts in Illinois history. The city paid $2 million and its insurers covered the remaining $13 million. Sanders, then 51, said he intended to keep working. “We need good investigators to help try and free these guys. And that’s why I want to stay at Loevy and Loevy. I want to participate in it.”
Sources: Sanders v. Illinois Union Insurance Co., 2019 IL 124565 (Ill. Nov. 21, 2019), for the case chronology, trial sequence, and consent judgment structure. Loevy & Loevy press releases, including the July 2014 announcement of his acquittal, and the September 2016 settlement release. The Exoneration Project case file. Chicago Sun-Times, NBC Chicago, CBS Chicago, ABC7 Chicago, and Chronicle Media coverage of the September 2016 settlement. Reporting on Sanders’ employment dates to 2016 and we have not confirmed his current role.
How Sanders Learned Law Behind Bars
Sanders had a high school education and a prison law library. That combination is worth understanding accurately, because it’s often described in ways that overstate what’s guaranteed.
In Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 (1977), the Supreme Court held that the constitutional right of access to the courts requires prison authorities to help incarcerated people prepare and file meaningful legal papers, either through adequate law libraries or through adequate assistance from people trained in law. Those are alternatives, not a mandate for a library in every facility.
The Court narrowed this further in Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343 (1996), holding that Bounds created no abstract, freestanding right to a law library or legal assistance. The right is access to the courts. To claim a violation, a person has to show actual injury, meaning that the shortcomings in the library or the assistance program hindered a real legal claim.
What that means in practice is that access varies enormously by facility. Sanders had a library good enough to work in for years. Plenty of people don’t, and the constitutional floor is lower than it’s often described.
The other thing worth naming is what his self-education actually accomplished and when. Sanders’ own work got his conviction vacated in 2011, seventeen years in. Trained lawyers carried the case from there, and the acquittal came three years and two more trials later. It’s a story about persistence over two decades, not a short course that produced a quick result.
What self-taught legal work counts as
There’s a gap worth understanding between what Sanders learned and what a certifying body will recognize.
NALA’s eligibility pathways run on formal education or supervised employment. Two of its three categories require an attorney to sign an attestation that you worked for them as a paralegal for a set period, one year alongside a bachelor’s degree or seven years with a high school diploma. Years in a prison law library, however skilled the work, produce no transcript and no attorney signature. They don’t map onto either pathway.
That doesn’t make self-study worthless. It’s what made Sanders employable, and once an attorney employs you that clock starts running. It does mean the route out of a law library runs through a job or a program first, and the credential comes after.
Education Behind Bars Has Changed Since Sanders Was Inside
The biggest change since Sanders taught himself out of an 80-year sentence is money.
For most of his incarceration, people in state and federal prison couldn’t receive Pell Grants at all. A 1994 crime bill had cut them off. In 2015 the Department of Education launched Second Chance Pell as a limited experiment at selected colleges. The original experiment ended on June 30, 2023, with a revised version continuing for participating schools while they worked toward approved programs.
It ended because it was replaced by something permanent. The FAFSA Simplification Act, passed in December 2020, restored Pell Grant eligibility for confined and incarcerated individuals as a matter of statute. Those provisions took effect July 1, 2023. Eligibility now runs through approved Prison Education Programs rather than a pilot, and a program has to be offered by a public or nonprofit institution to qualify. For-profit schools can’t operate a Title IV eligible Prison Education Program.
Two other financial aid points matter for anyone reading this after release. The old FAFSA drug-conviction penalty is gone. It stopped affecting eligibility with the 2021-22 award year, and the question came off the form entirely for 2023-24. Other categories of criminal conviction have never affected FAFSA eligibility.
One narrow exception survives, and it isn’t the FAFSA question. Under 21 U.S.C. 862, a sentencing court can order that someone convicted of drug trafficking or possession be denied federal benefits, and Title IV student aid falls within that definition. It’s a judicial order in an individual case rather than an automatic consequence of a conviction, so most people won’t be affected. If a denial of federal benefits appears anywhere in your sentencing order, check it against your aid application.
Sources: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, Prison Education Programs. Dear Colleague Letter GEN-21-04 (June 11, 2021). Dear Colleague Letter GEN-23-05.
What Sanders’ Path Does and Doesn’t Prove
His story gets shared as proof that anyone can do it. That’s not quite what it shows.
What made his case unusual
- He was factually innocent and won a full acquittal, not parole or early release. His record ends clean.
- Apart from the wrongful conviction, he had no criminal convictions at all.
- He had a seven-year effort from a University of Chicago legal clinic behind him.
- The firm that hired him had litigated his case and knew his work firsthand. Ainsworth described him as the first client the firm had ever hired.
- His practice area, wrongful convictions and police misconduct, is one where two decades inside is genuinely useful knowledge.
- A $15 million settlement meant he chose to keep working rather than needing to.
Almost none of that transfers.
What does transfer
The parts of Sanders’ approach that generalize are less dramatic and more useful. He built demonstrable skill before he needed to prove it to an employer. He worked in an area where his background was an asset rather than something to explain away. And he had people who’d seen his work personally and would say so.
That last one carries the most weight. A referral from someone who has watched you work does more than any credential when a hiring manager is weighing a record. Sanders had attorneys who’d spent years reading his filings.
Building that kind of relationship without a wrongful conviction case is slower but not mysterious. Volunteer work with a legal aid clinic, an innocence project, or an expungement program puts your work in front of attorneys who make hiring decisions. Contract and temporary assignments do the same thing on a paid basis. We’ve covered how to build paralegal experience through volunteer work and entry-level roles in more depth. Both let someone judge your research and your reliability before a background check enters the conversation, which reverses the usual order and is the whole point.
Certification After Release, Where Supervision Status Matters
This is where a lot of published advice gets it wrong, including an earlier version of this page.
Neither organization’s published application asks you to disclose past convictions, and neither describes a criminal background check anywhere in its documented process. That’s worth stating carefully. It establishes that criminal history isn’t collected on the form. It doesn’t prove that no verification happens internally, and neither body publishes a statement either way. What they do publish are eligibility rules, and the two draw the line in completely different places.
NALA bars people who are currently incarcerated for a felony or on probation, parole, or other court-imposed supervision for a felony. Its Certified Paralegal application and its General Exam Policies page both state this in the same words. A felony in your past, with the sentence and supervision finished, is not listed as a bar to applying. A felony conviction that happens after you’re certified is listed as grounds for suspension or revocation, alongside falsifying the application and unauthorized practice of law.
NFPA is stricter and categorical. For both of its credentials, its published eligibility requirements for the PCCE and the PACE state that the paralegal cannot have been convicted of a felony, and cannot be under suspension, termination, or revocation of a certificate, registration, or license by any entity. There’s no case-by-case review of the offense, the time elapsed, or evidence of rehabilitation. A felony conviction closes both NFPA credentials.
| Credential | Past felony, sentence and supervision complete | Currently incarcerated or on felony supervision | Criminal background check |
|---|---|---|---|
| NALA Certified Paralegal (CP) | Not listed as a bar to applying | Ineligible to apply | Not part of the published process. No conviction disclosure on the application |
| NFPA CORE Registered Paralegal (CRP), earned through the PCCE | Categorical bar | Categorical bar | Not part of the published eligibility requirements |
| NFPA Registered Paralegal (RP), earned through the PACE | Categorical bar | Categorical bar | Not part of the published eligibility requirements |
The practical reading for someone recently released is this. If you’re still on paper, NALA is closed to you until supervision ends, and waiting is a real option rather than a dead end. If you have a felony conviction behind you, NALA remains open and NFPA does not.
Certification is voluntary in most states either way. If you clear NALA’s supervision bar and want to pursue the CP, our guide to NALA paralegal certification walks through the exam, the fees, and the three eligibility pathways in detail. You can also work as a paralegal without any credential, which is exactly what Sanders did. The credential helps in a competitive hiring pool, but it isn’t the gate.
Sources: NALA Certified Paralegal Examination Application, ineligibility and applicant attestation sections. National Federation of Paralegal Associations, PACE and PCCE eligibility requirements. Verified September 2026 against both organizations’ published application materials.
Where Lived Experience Is an Asset
Loevy & Loevy didn’t hire Sanders in spite of his twenty years inside. The firm hired him partly because of what those years taught him about how a bad case gets built.
No hiring study ranks paralegal specialties by how open they are to applicants with records, so treat what follows as reasoning from Sanders’ case rather than measured evidence. The practice areas where the logic holds are specific and worth naming:
- Wrongful conviction and innocence work. Reading trial transcripts, spotting what a police report leaves out, understanding what a recantation means procedurally. Sanders does this work.
- Criminal defense. Defense attorneys work with clients who are frightened and often poorly served by the system. A paralegal who’s been on that side of the table communicates differently.
- Prisoner rights and conditions litigation. Firms bringing these cases need people who understand how a facility actually operates.
- Expungement and record-sealing clinics. The work is helping others clear what you’ve cleared.
- Legal aid and public interest offices. Mission-driven employers making individual hiring decisions rather than applying a corporate screening policy.
The mirror image is worth stating with the same caution. Work involving client funds, fiduciary duties, securities regulation, trust and estate administration, or federal security clearances tends to present steeper barriers, particularly where the conviction involved money or dishonesty. How steep depends on the offense, the employer, the jurisdiction, the duties, and any licensing or clearance rules that attach to the specific role.
Sanders’ career is a case study in matching the two. He didn’t overcome his background. He went to work somewhere it counted.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long did Rodell Sanders spend in prison, and how did he get out?
Sanders served 20 years. He was incarcerated on January 14, 1994 for the 1993 murder of Phillip Atkins in Chicago Heights, convicted in 1995, and sentenced to 80 years. There was no physical evidence against him. Working in the prison law library, by contemporaneous accounts as much as 12 hours a day and six days a week, he built his own post-conviction challenges. On January 14, 2011, the seventeenth anniversary of his incarceration, the conviction was vacated and a retrial ordered. A retrial in August 2013 ended in a mistrial. A third trial in July 2014, with attorneys from the University of Chicago’s Exoneration Project and Steven Greenberg of Greenberg Ltd, ended in acquittal on all counts after five days.
Can you get a paralegal certification while on probation or parole?
Not from NALA while the supervision is for a felony. NALA’s Certified Paralegal application states that people currently incarcerated for a felony offense, or on probation, parole, or other court-imposed supervision for a felony offense, are ineligible to apply. That bar lifts when supervision ends, so it’s a timing question rather than a permanent exclusion. NFPA’s rule is different and doesn’t turn on supervision status at all. Its published eligibility requirements for both the PCCE and the PACE state that the paralegal cannot have been convicted of a felony, which closes those credentials regardless of how long ago the conviction was or whether the sentence is complete. Certification is voluntary in most states, and you can work as a paralegal without either credential.
Do NALA and NFPA run criminal background checks on applicants?
Neither one asks about past convictions on its application, and neither describes a criminal background check anywhere in its published process. That isn’t the same as a guarantee. Neither organization publishes a statement about whether it verifies anything externally, so the accurate version is that criminal history isn’t collected on the form rather than that no check ever happens. Both rely on applicant attestation, and both treat falsifying the application as grounds for suspending or revoking the credential. NALA also lists a subsequent felony conviction, a conviction for unauthorized practice of law, and violations of its ethics code as separate grounds for revocation. This matters because the absence of a background check doesn’t make the eligibility rules optional. You’re certifying your own eligibility, and getting it wrong later costs you the credential.
Can you study law or earn a degree while incarcerated?
Yes, and the funding picture is much better than it was during most of Sanders’ sentence. Pell Grant eligibility for confined and incarcerated individuals was restored by the FAFSA Simplification Act, with the provisions taking effect July 1, 2023. Aid runs through approved Prison Education Programs, which must be offered by a public or nonprofit institution. For-profit schools can’t run a Title IV eligible program. The Second Chance Pell experiment that preceded this ended June 30, 2023, with a revised version continuing to cover participating schools during the transition. Availability still depends on whether the facility partners with a participating college, which varies widely. After release, the usual funding routes open up, and our guide to paying for paralegal school covers grants, scholarships, and workforce programs. Self-directed study through a prison law library, the route Sanders took, depends on what the facility provides.
Are prisons required to provide law libraries?
Not exactly, and this is commonly overstated. In Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 (1977), the Supreme Court held that the right of access to the courts requires prison authorities to help incarcerated people prepare and file meaningful legal papers, through adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from people trained in law. Those are alternatives. The Court then narrowed the rule in Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343 (1996), holding that Bounds created no abstract, freestanding right to a law library. The protected right is access to the courts, and someone claiming a violation has to show actual injury to a real legal claim. Facilities vary enormously in what they actually provide.
Is Rodell Sanders still working as a paralegal?
We can’t confirm his current role. All reporting on his employment dates to September 2016, when he said he intended to stay at Loevy & Loevy and continue working on wrongful conviction cases. He was 51 at the time. Nothing published since then addresses whether he’s still there, so treat his story as an account of what he did rather than a description of where he is now.
Key Takeaways
- Rodell Sanders served 20 years for a 1993 Chicago Heights murder he didn’t commit, taught himself law in prison law libraries, and got his conviction vacated in 2011 on the seventeenth anniversary of his incarceration
- His acquittal came in July 2014 at a third trial, after the first retrial hung, with attorneys from the University of Chicago’s Exoneration Project carrying the case for seven years
- Loevy & Loevy hired him after the acquittal, in a role described variously as legal assistant, law clerk, and paralegal, and attorney Russell Ainsworth said he was the first client the firm had ever hired
- The $15 million consent judgment entered in September 2016 was funded as $2 million from Chicago Heights and $3 million from a 1994 insurer, with the city assigning Sanders its claims for the remaining $10 million. He lost those assigned claims in the Illinois Supreme Court in 2019, so the headline figure describes a judgment rather than a payout
- NALA bars applicants who are currently incarcerated for a felony or on felony probation, parole, or court-imposed supervision, but a completed felony sentence is not listed as a bar to applying
- NFPA is categorical, and its published eligibility requirements for both the CRP and the RP credentials state that a paralegal cannot have been convicted of a felony
- Neither organization asks for conviction disclosure on its application or describes a criminal background check in its published process, though neither states outright that it never verifies
- Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students became statutory on July 1, 2023 through approved Prison Education Programs, replacing the Second Chance Pell experiment that ended June 30, 2023
- Wrongful conviction work, criminal defense, prisoner rights, expungement clinics, and legal aid are the practice areas where time served reads as knowledge rather than risk
- Sanders’ circumstances were unusual on almost every dimension, including factual innocence, a clean record otherwise, a legal clinic behind him, and an employer who had already seen his work
- Reporting on his employment stops in 2016, so his current role is unconfirmed
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