Lance Compa is a Senior Lecturer Emeritus at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, New York, where he taught U.S. labor law and employment law, international labor law, and other labor-related related courses for twenty-two years.

Before joining the Cornell faculty in 1997, Prof. Compa directed labor law research at the NAFTA Commission for Labor Cooperation. Prior to his 1995 appointment to the commission, he taught labor law, employment law, and international labor rights as a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management.

Prof. Compa has written widely on trade unions, international labor rights, and other topics for a variety of law reviews, journals of general interest, magazines and newspapers. He wrote the 2010 Human Rights Watch report A Strange Case: Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations. He is also author of the 2005 HRW report Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants, and the 2000 HRW report Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards.

In addition to his studies of workers' rights in the United States, Prof. Compa has conducted workers' rights investigations and reports on Cambodia, Chile, China, Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico, Sri Lanka and other developing countries. In 2022 he was named to the U.S. roster of panelists under the rapid-response mechanism of the USMCA labor chapter, and as a European Union external expert panelist in bilateral disputes under labor chapters in EU trade agreements with third countries.

After law school and before turning to international labor law practice and teaching, Compa worked for many years as a trade union organizer and negotiator; first for the United Electrical Workers (UE), and then for the Newspaper Guild. While on the UE staff, he was involved in organizing and collective bargaining negotiations in multinational firms like General Electric and Westinghouse, and at many medium and small-sized firms throughout the United States. At the Newspaper Guild, he represented editorial, business, and production employees at the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Agence France-Presse, and other news organizations.

Compa is a 1969 graduate of Fordham University, a 1973 graduate of Yale Law School, and a member (retired/inactive) of the Massachusetts Bar. He also undertook studies abroad at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, France (1967-1968) and at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile (1972-1973).