Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

You can have a misdemeanor expunged, but you would still need to disclose it on any applications that involve state licensing. That includes becoming an attorney or a school teacher. The Department of Justice keeps the information, and it will show up as soon as your prints are run, regardless of any expungement.

Mr. Roach is right, but his answer is about misdemeanor convictions. If you made a civil compromise, then the charges against you were probably dismissed. You would not have a conviction if that is what happened.

Arrest records cannot be expunged. But arrest records are not as readily available as records of convictions. That is because it is fairly common for charges to be dropped after an arrest. The arrest says only that, at a particular point in time, there was reason to think the arrestee had committed a crime. It does not say that he actually did it, much less that a jury was persuaded of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Because many laypeople would not understand this distinction, arrest records are generally not made public.

So, if your civil compromise resulted in a dismissal of the charges against you, the Bar or other licensing agencies will not be able to deny you a license on that basis. They may still learn about the incident, and they may take it into account when they make their decision. It's possible that they will even deny your license on that basis. (The Bar, at least, considers each applicant's moral fitness; for that evaluation it is allowed to consider facts which did not result in criminal convictions or which were not even crimes at all.) But a mere arrest is far less likely to be an obstacle than a conviction.