Author ORCID Identifier
Abstract
Technology has revolutionized legal practice, education, and societygenerally, yet the availability of new forms of digital media has notsignificantly changed the locus of legal scholarship. This Article examineswhether our collective understanding of where scholarship can existshould expand to include podcasting as a formally acknowledged mediumfor legal scholarship. Student-edited law journals remain the primaryvehicle for disseminating law faculty scholarship, as well as an importantmeasure of faculty productivity and success as scholars, even though mostlegal research is conducted online. Despite acknowledged structurallimitations and biases inherent in the academic law review system,traditional print law journals continue to be more highly placed on thehierarchy than their online counterparts. Alternatives like blogging neverachieved popular acceptance as a legitimate site for legal scholarship. Thecontinued resistance of the legal academy to utilizing new forms of mediapresents a real threat to the relevance and broader impact of legalscholarship.The goal of my inquiry is to promote necessary attitudinal andinstitutional change to facilitate the ongoing creation of significant legalscholarship in the form of podcasts. This discussion requires aninterrogation of whether scholarship is defined by its content, or whetherthe medium in which it is delivered also matters, but it is not acondemnation of traditional written scholarship, nor an endorsement forpodcasting as a venue for every scholar’s work. Rather, it presents anuanced case for broadening the definition of what legal scholarship looks(or sounds) like to build new audiences for the work of legal academics.
Recommended Citation
Sara Y. Gras, Positioning Podcasting as Legal Scholarship, 2024 ULR 189 (2024)