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Simpson Thacher retired partner, Conrad Harper, has been named one of the "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers" by The National Law Journal, as announced on May 26, 2008.  A recipient of The American Lawyer Magazine's annual Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, Mr. Harper has spent his career blazing trails. He was a litigator with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund where one of his landmark cases included arguing successfully before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of residents from Little Rock, Arkansas who sought membership to an all-white club.  Mr. Harper then joined Simpson Thacher in 1971 and became the Firm's first African American partner in 1974.  He became the first African American president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in 1990, where he spearheaded a statement of diversity principles that has since been adopted by more than 130 New York City law firms and corporate legal departments.

Mr. Harper served as Legal Adviser to the U.S. State Department during the Clinton administration, building the case under international law for condemning the genocide in Rwanda.  He was the first African American member of the Harvard Corporation, the University's governing board, from which he resigned in 2005 to protest former university President Lawrence H. Summers following Summers' public comments that many viewed as demeaning to women and minorities.  Harvard University awarded him an honorary degree in 2007.

Among his many extraordinary achievements, Mr. Harper also served as the Chairman of the Executive Committee and Vice Chairman of the Board of the New York Public Library from 1990-1993, and from 1987-1992 he was Chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. He has served as an officer on the board of numerous professional and nonprofit organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Greenwall Foundation, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Academy of Political Science. He is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the Council of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Harper received his bachelor’s degree from Howard University in 1962 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1965. He continues to be of counsel to Simpson Thacher, having retired from full-time practice in 2003.