The Bishop Society, named for long-time Cumberland School of Law professor and dean T. Brad Bishop, continues to support Cumberland students through the its scholarship fund. The 2020 Bishop Society Scholarship recipient is Blake Harper.

Prior to coming to law school, Harper worked as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for seven years. In order to diversify his professional background, Harper chose to pursue a legal education.

While at Cumberland, Harper has excelled, ranking in the top 2% of his class. He has received recognition on the Dean’s List numerous semesters and has received Scholar of Merit recognition for multiple courses. He is a member of the National Moot Court Team and an Abraham Caruthers Fellow, and served as an associate justice on the Moot Court Executive Board and a junior editor for the Cumberland Law Review.

In addition to being an active law student, Harper is a dedicated husband and new father. “I am honored to have been selected as the recipient of the Bishop Society Scholarship. My wife and I just had our first child in August, so we are very grateful for the financial support this award provides.”

Upon receiving his Juris Doctor in December 2020, Harper will join the attorneys of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz. There he plans to primarily focus on business transactions, combining his experience working as a CPA and his newly completed legal education.

Harper added, “My experience at Cumberland has been overwhelmingly positive. To anyone who is considering law school, I can't recommend Cumberland strongly enough. The camaraderie within our student body makes the challenging task of learning the law much more enjoyable, and the law school's location in Birmingham provides unique networking opportunities with some of the largest law firms in Alabama. Thanks to our great professors, I feel very confident that I am ready to take the bar exam and hit the ground running at Baker Donelson next year.”

Since its inception in 2017, the Bishop Society has collectively gathered contributions to provide scholarship support and public interest fellowships to deserving law students, to upgrade technology and law school facilities, to support the preparation and travel of Cumberland’s trial and other advocacy teams, and to support faculty research. Thanks to Bishop’s generous spirit and dedication to Cumberland, and member contributions, the Bishop Society will continue to support aspiring legal students to achieve their dream of attending Cumberland School of Law.

To support the Bishop Society and help continue this legacy, contact Paula Kierce, director of development, at pkierce@samford.edu.