Lindsay Bernsen Wardlaw is the founder of Wardlaw Trade Law, a boutique U.S. trade law practice in the Washington, D.C. area focused on providing practical regulatory advice to multinational companies. She is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching U.S. export control and sanctions law, and an adjunct clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she supervises student attorneys in the International Transactions Clinic.

At Wardlaw Trade Law, Lindsay serves as an extension of her clients’ in-house legal and compliance teams, advising on U.S. export controls, sanctions, antiboycott, and customs regulations. She guides clients through advocacy before BIS, DDTC, OFAC, CBP, ICTS, and Census — including voluntary disclosures, investigations, licensing, classification, and transactional due diligence — helping them build business-friendly compliance programs that address their real-world operations.

With over a decade of trade experience, Lindsay blends big-firm precision with in-house pragmatism. Lindsay started her career as a corporate trade compliance analyst, classifying items for export and conducting licensing analyses. She quickly became a trade compliance manager, focused on developing and documenting her company’s trade compliance program globally and in each jurisdiction where the company operated, and on implementing cross-departmental process improvements. After law school, Lindsay became an international trade attorney at Sidley Austin, then at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. She was later a Vice President at Amalie Trade Compliance Consulting, where she led the firm’s trade advisory practice, managed internal compliance, and supervised teams of consultants conducting risk assessments, audits, restricted party screening, and classification projects for her clients. 

Admitted in D.C., Maryland, and before the U.S. Court of International Trade, she achieved the nation’s highest score on the 2016 U.S. Customs Broker Exam and is a licensed U.S. customs broker.

Because of her unique background, Lindsay’s trade compliance program experience is unparalleled. She has written and edited hundreds of trade compliance processes, procedures, and work instructions. She has reviewed thousands of export and import classifications and potential boycott requests and has successfully concluded classification and licensing requests and disclosures in her clients’ favor. As a result, she has a deep-rooted respect for in-house compliance teams and a knack for quickly identifying a program’s friction points and taking concrete actions to resolve them.

Lindsay earned her J.D. magna cum laude and Order of the Coif in 2019 from the University of Michigan Law School. At Michigan Law, she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Journal of International Law, a supervising attorney in the International Transactions Clinic, a student coach for the Vis Moot team, and an intern at the Department of Justice’s National Courts Section, where she drafted motions for the Court of International Trade, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Court of Federal Claims. 

She holds a B.A. cum laude, with various other honors, in International Political Economy with a minor in Political Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, where she was also a Bill Archer Fellow, student ambassador, Congressional intern, and research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. At the Wilson Center, Lindsay researched and edited a book on the history of global trade agreements (Globalization and America’s Trade Agreements) by William Krist. At other points in her academic career, Lindsay researched and edited the book The Technology Trap by Dr. Lloyd J. Dumas and the chapter “United States Arbitration Law and Practice” by Dr. Katherine Simpson (published in the book U.S. Law for Civil Lawyers: A Practical Reference Guide). 

Today, she serves on the board of the Michigan Law International Transactions Clinic and on the steering committee for the ABA International Law Section’s Export Controls & Sanctions subcommittee. She previously co-coached Michigan’s Vis Moot team as a volunteer, and she was a Sidley Pro Bono Fellow at the CAIR Coalition (now the Amica Center), successfully representing asylum seekers in hearings before administrative law judges and earning Sidley CAIR’s 2021 Detained Adult Champion award.