The Legal Knowledge podcast is based on the UVA Law Library’s forthcoming book with UVA Press, which brings together thirteen contributors to examine UVA Law’s impact on legal education from the institution’s founding to the present. The book is the second in the Law Library’s three-volume series (the first chronicles the architectural history; the third will cover student life). Meggan Cashwell, Randi Flaherty, and Loren Moulds are the volume editors.

Like the book, the podcast balances changing conceptions of the law and pedagogical methods with the social, cultural, and political developments that influenced legal education at UVA. In telling this longer history, the book and podcast center the people who impacted curricular change over time. In each episode we focus on individual stories, and not just those of faculty and students. Listeners will hear about the enslaved individuals who built the University; the wives and daughters of UVA Law professors; and a myriad of other people who shaped the Law School’s history. The framework of “legal knowledge” allows us to tell a more holistic and transparent history by expanding the scope and context of legal education.

The podcast also helps to fulfill our mission in UVA Law Special Collections, which is to preserve, interpret, and share the history of UVA Law and make accessible our collection of legal history materials. The book and podcast both utilize our archive and the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library extensively. This is a timely moment for an institutional history podcast, as UVA continues to grapple with its legacy. Curricular history has provided a lens to explore changes in and outside the classroom over time. The podcast is as much about legal teachings as it is the national landscape of the law and major social and cultural developments in the US. Ultimately, it serves as a way to tell this larger story to more people.