Shirley Cantin Brings Passion and Positivity to Gilead’s Legal Mission

Every so often, Shirley Cantin crosses the country to check in on Gilead Sciences’ company headquarters in Foster City, California. The senior associate general counsel and head of US IP litigation ran into a colleague on a recent trip back. Cantin mentioned that she was in from Boston, where she and her family live, and her coworker was confused. Cantin seems to be everywhere, all the time, at Gilead, and so it couldn’t be possible that she was a remote employee who didn’t have an office at HQ.

But it is. Cantin is just very, very good at this remote work thing.

“I imagine there are people at Gilead who get tired of hearing from me,” Cantin says, laughing. “I think it’s incredible the kind of relationships you can build even though you’re not physically on campus.”

Shirley Cantin is not who you think of when you think of a lawyer. She smiles a lot, and her optimism doesn’t feel forced or manufactured. It also doesn’t feel naive. She has chosen to see the best in people in a world where that is increasingly hard to do. The law has not made her jaded, nor has it hurt her belief in the good of the human soul.

Her colleagues in private practice see those qualities clearly. Eric Alan Stone and Josephine Young, partners at Groombridge, Wu, Baughman & Stone LLP, note that “Shirley Cantin brings people together and keeps everyone focused on legal strategies that support scientific progress. She understands how the law protects innovation, and how collaboration drives results. She’s a role model as a lawyer, a client, and a leader.” Their perspective underscores what makes Cantin so effective not only as an attorney, but as a connector of people and ideas.

Cantin came to Gilead under particularly dramatic circumstances. She joined the organization in April 2020. Her farewell party at her former law firm was the day before the national shutdown. Her home was on the market, and she and her family were prepared for a cross-country move.

“There are so very few roles that I would have been willing to move across the country for,” the lawyer explains. “But Gilead is known to hold a robust and dynamic litigation team. This was a rare opportunity. I mean, the house was getting staged to be shown, and then the world shut down.”

Cantin was trusted to take on her role remotely, and her family has remained in Boston ever since. It’s worked out so well that the company had no hesitation in making her one of few remote employees at Gilead who lead a function.

One of the attorney’s shining moments came in the form of a 2023 verdict finding that Gilead hadn’t engaged in a “pay for delay” scheme to prevent Teva Pharmaceuticals’ generic HIV drugs from hitting the market. Gilead could have just been shown not to have the market power to do so, but the jury went further to absolve the company from having engaged in “pay for delay.”

The case was rare for many reasons. High-stakes litigation claims rarely make it to trial, much less one that went on for six weeks, with billions of dollars at stake. For Cantin, it was the opportunity to approach the case from a different vantage point.

“On this side of the house, you see the big picture and how it’s not just about the case, it’s about our whole portfolio of cases,” Cantin explains. “When I’m reading an opening statement, I can help guide what we want people to take away, whether that’s a judge or a juror or a lay person. It’s a coaching capacity, yes, to make the right legal argument, but the arguments also have to be accessible.”

Her trial partners at Kirkland & Ellis say that approach defines her leadership. As partner Kevin Jonke puts it, “Working with Shirley is a true privilege. Her leadership, sharp instincts, and commitment to Gilead’s mission foster a culture of teamwork and excellence. She’s embedded in our cases—she sees the big picture but also knows the details. Kirkland is proud to partner with Shirley and looks forward to our continued collaboration.” It’s a sentiment echoed throughout the firms that work alongside her.

This is what Cantin loves most: distilling complex information down to what matters and what translates. For some lawyers, learning to communicate their ideas to “non-lawyers” is an exercise in pain. But some, like Cantin, love to build those connections. She sees it as an extension of Gilead’s mission to deliver lifesaving medicine to people who need it.

“The best part of my job is taking these extraordinarily complex issues—legal issues, technical issues, IP issues—and distilling them into bite-size pieces for the right audience,” Cantin says. “There is this panoply of different audiences, and you have to figure out what makes sense for what audience. I love that.”

Cantin says she didn’t grow up playing sports. She jokes that sometimes her classmates elected to pick nobody instead of picking her. But over the years, she’s embraced a sports approach. She sees litigation as a team sport, that a collective victory is sweeter than any individual glory. If the team does well, Cantin has done well.

Maybe that’s why she’s so consistently generous with her own praise. The attorney repeatedly brings up her colleagues, her past and present leaders and mentors, the people at Gilead who she says embody what a mission-based organization should be. She credits her husband as her “life coach” who has empowered her to achieve her dreams, and that most certainly includes raising their two daughters together.

At this stage, the attorney and mother says she has hit her stride. Some hit it in their teens, some in their twenties. Cantin says it’s gotten really good at 42. She feels confident in who she is and what she brings to the table. And she’s happy. That much is sure. Cantin’s positivity is her calling card, but don’t mistake it for weakness. She’d just prefer to see the best in us all.