Students at the University of Virginia School of Law have been awarded a $70,000 grant from the Jefferson Trust to develop and teach a business law course for incarcerated learners.
The grant, given to the student-run Virginia Law in Prison Project in partnership with UVA Law’s Decarceration and Community Reentry Clinic and Resilience Education, will allow Professor Kelly Orians, who directs the clinic, her colleagues and her students to finish building a full semester’s curriculum and develop more trainings for the law students teaching the classes.
“This initiative is about more than just law students mastering complex legal topics and teaching business law,” Orians said. “It’s about developing empathy, building bridges and creating opportunities for people impacted by the criminal legal system to thrive.”
The Jefferson Trust awarded nearly $1.5 million to 17 new projects and programs across UVA in January, with many focused on community outreach.
In preparing for their pitch to the board, VLPP President Ashley Ramsay ’26 and Sam Meyer ’25 considered the best way to present what law students have learned while teaching.
“I wanted to focus my portion of the pitch on the real impact that I have seen the pilot program have on both the incarcerated learners and the law students,” Meyer said.
After reviewing the course he taught, he considered the instances in which incarcerated learners expressed interest, shock or otherwise noted that the content of the lesson was impactful for them. He decided to tell a story about the day they discussed court debt.
“Many incarcerated learners did not know that they could be rearrested and reincarcerated for not paying court fees,” he said. “They then began to create budgets and saving plans, to set aside the meager wages earned at Fluvanna Correctional Center to begin paying their fines and let their family and friends in similar situations know so that none of them would get in trouble for failing to pay.”
According to Orians, there are five prisons housing more than 5,000 people within less than an hour’s distance of the Law School. Her hope is that VLPP will encourage students to engage more with people who are incarcerated, while also empowering incarcerated people through education.
“Most days in the classroom, the law students learn just as much from the incarcerated learners as they teach,” she said.
The students have been particularly struck by the realities former inmates face when they reenter the community reentry.
“The reentry process is so complicated that many people are seemingly bound to fail if they do not have robust support,” Meyer said. “Many of these complexities and problems can be mitigated, at least partially, simply by taking the time to explain to returning citizens the legal requirements they must abide by.”
Orians hopes to expand the program to at least two other prisons located near the Law School, which will allow VLPP to triple the number of law students they engage and incarcerated learners they teach.
She and her colleagues are also working for the course to become credit-bearing through the UVA School of Continuing and Professional Studies, so that completing it will count toward a bachelor’s degree for the incarcerated learners. Orians’ and the students’ efforts are building upon a decade-long effort by the nonprofit Resilience Education to educate incarcerated people in prisons across Virginia and up and down the East Coast.
“I am proud of all that we have been able to accomplish so far, and I am excited to see where this grant can take us,” Ramsay said. “VLPP has a wonderful opportunity to contribute to both the Law School community and the larger Charlottesville and Virginia communities, and I think that is simply amazing.”
Meyer said every law student should be required to enter a prison at least once to spend time with the incarcerated.
“This will help you develop other skills that will benefit you in whatever you pursue a career in, even if it has nothing to do with criminal law — or law at all.”
Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.
