The University of Georgia School of Law’s Emerging Scholars initiative brings accomplished practitioners to campus to hone their teaching and academic-writing skills during a two-year residency. In 2023, three Emerging Scholars began their residencies: Jill Benton (J.D.’99), Shanée Brown, and Mary Yiyue Zhao. Of the three scholars, Zhao’s scholarship and courses include international areas of focus.

Zhao will instruct in the areas of international intellectual property law and international business transactions. Her scholarship includes: “Morals in Place of Markets: Courts’ Approach to Post-Sale Confusion” forthcoming in the Rutgers Law Review, “Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform: Reconsidering the Multilateral Investment Court in the Context of Disputes Involving Intellectual Property” in the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts and “Transparency in International Commercial Arbitration: Adopting a Balanced Approach” in the Virginia Journal of International Law. 

Before entering academia, Zhao served as an associate for approximately five years at Covington & Burling, where she represented clients in commercial and intellectual property litigation. She was also a visitor at the Max Planck Institute Department of Ethics, Law and Politics during September 2018. 

During her time in law school, she worked at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in Austria as a legal intern and at the International Law and Policy Institute in Norway as a research assistant. 

She earned her bachelor’s degree with highest honors from Cornell University in 2014 and both her law and master’s degrees from Stanford University in 2018.