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Nell Clement grew up in a family shaped by strong, working women. Her grandmother, the matriarch of her family, lived to be 101 and served as a strong influence on Clement. The future lawyer would first follow her grandmother’s path as an educator.
Today, Clement serves as associate general counsel at Gilead Sciences, a company well-known for cutting-edge medical therapies for HIV/AIDS, liver disease, inflammation, and oncology, as well as the employment of in-house counsel that is, simply put, some of the very best in their fields. But before Clement would become a best-in-class in-house counsel, she was a New York City public school teacher.
The Yale undergrad, who also has a master’s in education, began her career at PS 299 in Brooklyn in an underserved part of the borough.
“It was very challenging, but also incredibly rewarding,” Clement remembers. “In a hard to staff school like mine, you see so many structural inequalities and injustices that are just part of your everyday reality. After four years, I felt that it was time to try something else.”
She crossed the country for law school at UC San Francisco and has remained on the West Coast ever since. Clement spent nearly a decade at the firm Farella, Braun, and Martel, where she built experience in white-collar defense, including antitrust matters, securities fraud, insider trading, stock options backdating, corporate internal investigations, and False Claims Act cases.
Nell Clement
“The lawyers and paralegals I lead are amazing people, both personally and professionally. This company has a fairly high bar for who they seek out, and I think it’s just as much about who the person is as their skillset.”
Her civil litigation practice at Farella encompassed federal and state matters, ranging from general business litigation to land use cases, and probate trust and estate disputes.
“I feel fortunate to have spent my early career at a place where cases were staffed fairly leanly,” Clement explains. “I got a chance to do substantive work and to interact with clients very early on in a way that would have been unlikely at a big law firm. The people were wonderful and so were my mentors. I still see so many of my colleagues from my time at the firm. They still mean a great deal to me.”
One late night at her firm, Clement picked up what turned out to be a cold call from a recruiter. She didn’t have much of an intention of leaving but figured she’d work through the interview process to see what it was like. The job was at Gilead Sciences, and the more people she met with during the interview process, the more she began to consider the possibility of going in-house.
“I could have spent the rest of my career at my firm and been very happy,” Clement says. “But this was a chance to build a whole different set of skills and to look at litigation through a different lens.”
Clement accepted the offer to join Gilead Sciences in 2018 as an attorney on a growing litigation and investigations team. The associate general counsel says her new perspective required some evolution on her own part.
“When you’re at a firm, you’re in the weeds on everything,” Clement says. “When you move in-house, you are managing outside counsel who are the ones in the weeds. It’s really about making sure that you have a broad understanding of all the various issues in a particular case, but you don’t, and can’t, know every single document by heart. It’s about asking the right questions to get the answers that you need. That shift in mindset was a bit of a steep learning curve.”
“I feel fortunate to have spent my early career at a place where cases were staffed fairly leanly. I got a chance to do substantive work and to interact with clients very early on in a way that would have been unlikely at a big law firm.”
Nell Clement
Clement began as an individual contributor, but her acumen has allowed her to lead people as she’s gained experience at Gilead. Her team is part of a broader litigation and investigations team that handles any litigation matter that doesn’t involve IP or employment law. And in taking on leadership of that team, Clement says she’s found a new calling.
“Managing a team has become one of the highlights of my workday,” the AGC explains. “The lawyers and paralegals I lead are amazing people, both personally and professionally. This company has a fairly high bar for who they seek out, and I think it’s just as much about who the person is as their skill set. The people on my team are shining stars, and I’m so proud of them.”
“Working with Nell is a true privilege. She brings exceptional legal insight, strategic thinking, and a practical, solution-oriented approach to every challenge,” says Devora Allon, partner at Kirkland & Ellis. “Her ability to navigate complex issues with clarity and precision, combined with her genuine passion for and dedication to Gilead’s lifesaving work, make her an invaluable partner and a standout in-house counsel.”
While she may not be teaching anymore, there are still plenty of reminders of Clement’s days in the classroom: the teacher Clement saw every day across the hall became her husband, with whom she’s raised three boys.
“Nell Clement leads with unwavering integrity and a bold spirit of innovation. Her vision reflects the future of life sciences—one Irell is proud to support and protect.”
–Jason Sheasby, Partner
Expertise Spotlight
Kirkland & Ellis is an international law firm serving a broad range of clients around the world in high-stakes commercial and intellectual property litigation; private equity, M&A and other complex corporate transactions; investment fund formation and alternative asset management; restructurings; and white collar and government disputes. We offer the highest quality legal advice coupled with extraordinary, tailored service to deliver exceptional results to our clients and help their businesses succeed. We invest in the brightest legal talent and build dynamic teams that operate at the pinnacle of their respective areas.
Renowned for our experience in complex litigation, our clients rely on us to anticipate their needs and outperform their expectations. We believe that the best litigation results — whether achieved in court or across the bargaining table — occur when the lawyers are fully prepared to try the case through verdict. We represent clients in trial and appellate courts at the federal and state level, before administrative tribunals, in arbitrations and other dispute resolution proceedings, and in connection with proceedings involving government agencies, and our lawyers have tried cases successfully to verdict or judgment in virtually every business segment and substantive area.
Please see www.kirkland.com for more information.
