Desirée LeClercq

Desirée LeClercq will join the University of Georgia School of Law in the fall of 2024 as an assistant professor. She will teach International Trade and Workers Rights, International Labor Law, International Law and U.S. Labor Law. She will also serve as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center and as the faculty adviser for the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law.

LeClercq comes to UGA from Cornell University, where she was an assistant professor in the School of Industrial Labor Relations and an associate faculty member in the Law School for four years. She won the 2020 MacIntyre Award for Exemplary Teaching & Advising and the 2022 Women’s Leadership Initiative Leading Ladies Award.

Specializing in international and labor law, LeClercq has recently published extensively in flagship and specialty law reviews, including the Fordham Law Review, the Virginia Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, the Administrative Law Review, the American University Law Review and the Berkeley Journal of International Law. Notably, her Columbia Journal of Transnational Law article titled “A Worker-Centered Trade Policy” won the ComplianceNet Outstanding Junior Publication Award. LeClercq has also contributed several book chapters on international trade and labor, and she is a frequent contributor to Fortune.

Previously she served as a director of labor affairs in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2016 to 2020, during which time she was an adjunct professor at the American University Washington College of Law. Additionally, LeClercq worked for nearly a decade as a legal officer at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and served as staff counsel for the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

LeClercq is active in the American Society of International Law and serves on the Executive Committee of the AALS Human Rights and Labor Relations and Employment Law sections. Also, since 2022, she has served as a designated candidate to chair European Union Trade and Sustainable Expert Panel Proceedings.

She earned her B. A. with high honors from Indiana University and her J.D. with high honors from the University of Texas, where she was the articles and notes editor for the Texas International Law Journal.