Samford University Cumberland School of Law: admission requirements and 509 data

What the 2025 numbers say about Samford University Cumberland

Samford University Cumberland received 925 completed applications for the 2025 entering class and made 453 offers of admission, an acceptance rate of 49.0%. 168 of those admitted enrolled, a yield of 37.1%. The full first-year class came to 170 students, all full time. Total JD enrollment across all years is 471.

Enrolled students posted a median LSAT of 156, with a 25th percentile of 154 and a 75th of 160. That is 3 points below the 159 median across the 196 ABA-approved schools in this data. It ranks 122 of 196 on LSAT median. Undergraduate GPA ran 3.42 at the 25th percentile, 3.63 at the median and 3.84 at the 75th.

Full-time tuition is $46,334 a year at a single rate for residents and non-residents. Mandatory fees add $1,000. The school's own living-expense estimate for a single student off campus is $31,226. Tuition, fees and that living estimate add up to $78,560 for one year, or $235,680 across three, before any grant. 415 JD students hold a grant or scholarship, 93% of the student body, and the median full-time award is $20,000. 3 awards cover full tuition or more. The school reports conditional scholarships: 155 entering students held one and 7 had it reduced or eliminated.

Of the graduating class that sat a bar exam for the first time, 119 of 151 passed, a rate of 78.81%. The weighted average across the jurisdictions where those graduates sat was 80.15%, so the school ran 1.34 points behind the jurisdictions it feeds. Ten months after graduation, 112 of 139 graduates (80.6%) held a job requiring bar admission. 16 joined law firms of 251 lawyers or more (11.5% of the class), of whom 8 went to firms of 501 or more. 3 took federal clerkships. The largest single destination was Alabama with 101 graduates, followed by Georgia with 6.

Samford University Cumberland has been approved by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education since 1949. It is a private school based in Birmingham, AL. 2 first-year students left for academic reasons, 1.0% of the class. 2 students transferred in from other law schools.

The full 509 record

Alabama has 3 ABA-approved law schools. The Alabama guide compares them on LSAT median, cost and bar passage, and covers the state's admission rules.

Data: ABA Standard 509 Information Report (2025), published for consumer disclosure, retrieved from the ABA Required Disclosures portal on 2026-09-01. Bar passage and employment figures come from the same portal's Bar Passage Outcomes and Employment Summary reports for the class of 2024. Figures describe the 2025 to 2026 reporting cycle for Samford University Cumberland School of Law and are restated in our own structure; no ABA document or file is reproduced here. Verify anything decision-critical with the school.

Related reading: LSAT score guide, GPA benchmarks, law school cost and ROI, application timeline, all 196 ABA-approved schools, and the Yale profile for the top of the range.