Second-year Corpus law student Jacob Simmonds has joined forces with two of his course mates to create the Explore the Law podcast, where they sit down with academics from the Faculty of Law to learn more about their research interests, career pathways and what makes them tick.

Aimed at current law students, those considering studying the law or simply individuals who are curious about the world of legal academia, the podcast offers the student hosts the unique opportunity to pose questions to their lecturers, rather than being the ones put on the spot.

To date, three episodes have aired focusing on animal rights, criminal law and Roman law, with an insight into the varied career journeys of the interviewees and what brought them to work in academia.

“In lectures they only have a limited time to teach us according to the syllabus, so we don’t really get to scratch the surface of their research, the hidden side of them. From a student's perspective, you interact with them as lecturers, but a lot of the time they're researching. So that's what we wanted to explore,” says Jacob.

“Unsurprisingly, the sort of things they research are related to what they're teaching us, just in a lot more detail than we go into in a lecture. They have talked about things that I could bring up when it came to my exams, for example, about maritime Roman law, which was not on the syllabus necessarily, but was particularly relevant to what we were studying. That wasn't the aim, but it was a convenient by-product. It was extracurricular, but it still related enough to what we were learning that it was academically relevant.”

Jacob’s co-hosts on the podcast are Matthew Ramli from Christ’s and Anita Handojo from Kings. Matthew approached Jacob to get involved after competing against him in the Cambridge University Law Society (CULS) Fledgling Mooting Competition, the final of which took place at the Supreme Court in London during his first year at Corpus. Jacob placed second.

As he prepares to enter Easter Term of his second year, Jacob continues to make a name for himself in the legal community of Cambridge, having placed first in the One Essex Court De Smith Moot earlier in Lent, beating off stiff competition from fellow undergraduates and postgraduates.

Listen to the Explore the Law podcast here.