Jeanne M. Gills has built her career at the intersection of disciplines that rarely stay simple for long.
As an Equity Partner at Foley & Lardner LLP and one of the country’s few first-chair Black patent litigators, she works across intellectual property litigation, high-value transactions, emerging technologies, leadership, and mentorship. Her background in electrical engineering gives her a technical lens, but it is her ability to connect people, ideas, and business priorities that has shaped the broader arc of her career.
For Jeanne, that journey began with science.
STEM was deeply embedded in her upbringing. Her father earned a Ph.D. in mathematics, while her sister earned a Ph.D. in optical physics. A pre-engineering program at Purdue University before her senior year of high school eventually led her to study electrical engineering at Michigan State University.
Still, she was unsure whether a traditional engineering career was the right fit.
The answer came during an internship at 3M Company, where she found herself spending significant time with patent attorneys because of the constant innovation taking place in the laboratories around her.
“The intersection of law and science immediately captivated me,” Jeanne recalls.
That realization eventually led her toward intellectual property law, and more specifically, litigation.
Turning Technical Knowledge into Legal Strategy
Jeanne’s engineering background continues to influence how she approaches complex intellectual property matters.
Her practice extends well beyond patent litigation and includes trade secret, trademark, trade dress, copyright, and false advertising disputes. Over the years, she has worked on matters involving everything from consumer products and automotive technology to apparel and artificial intelligence.
“My technical skills give me the confidence to tackle any technology,” she says.
That confidence is paired with another skill she considers equally important: building relationships.
Jeanne credits much of that perspective to watching her parents combine professional expertise with an ability to connect with others. Her father’s own career ranged from teaching mathematics at HBCUs to engineering roles at AT&T and NASA, while also becoming the first Black member of the Allentown, Pennsylvania School Board.
The example reinforced for Jeanne that knowledge alone is rarely enough. Relationships, communication, and trust also shape opportunities.
Those qualities have helped her build teams inside and outside Foley and develop a broader IP practice than many traditional litigation roles allow.
Bringing a Litigator’s Mindset to Business Deals
Jeanne’s litigation experience has also become an important part of her transactional work.
Nearly 15 years ago, a former Fortune 100 deputy general counsel helped her see that the risk-management skills developed through litigation could add significant value to mergers, acquisitions, and other IP-driven transactions.
Litigators are constantly considering what can go wrong, how contractual language may later be interpreted, and where disputes may emerge.
Jeanne applies that same thinking before a deal is completed.
Her objective is to identify ambiguity, ownership disputes, licensing risks, or weaknesses within an intellectual property portfolio before they become costly problems.
“At the end of the day, whether it is litigation or a transaction, I align the legal strategies to my client’s overall business objectives,” she explains.
That principle captures much of her approach. The legal work cannot exist in isolation from the commercial reality surrounding it.
Building “Team Impossible”
Jeanne’s philosophy extends beyond client matters into the way she leads people.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group she had been developing for years officially became known as “Team Impossible.”
Today, the team includes more than 60 attorneys, paraprofessionals, and business professionals across multiple Foley offices.
Its foundation is simple: excellence matters, but relationships are what allow people to consistently achieve it together.
“Every company undoubtedly needs strong leaders, but it is our connections and relationships, with these leaders and with each other, that truly drive success,” Jeanne says.
The group operates around the belief that ambitious goals become more achievable when people support one another professionally and personally.
For Jeanne, leadership is not simply about directing others. It is about creating an environment where people choose to contribute, collaborate, and grow.
She recalls a client CEO describing great leadership as something people follow voluntarily. That idea has stayed with her.
Through Team Impossible, she wants to create exactly that kind of environment.
Mentorship as a Responsibility
Mentorship has been equally important to Jeanne’s career.
She readily acknowledges that she benefited from exceptional mentors both inside and outside Foley, an experience she knows is not universal within Big Law.
Because of that, she feels a responsibility to support the next generation of professionals.
“I am the product and beneficiary of phenomenal mentorship,” she says.
Jeanne has held significant leadership roles within Foley, including positions on the firm’s IP Department leadership team, Management Committee, and Compensation Committee. Alongside that work, she continues mentoring attorneys, helping clients identify legal talent, and supporting professionals moving between law firms and in-house roles.
Her mentorship also extends into conversations about life outside work.
As a single mother to an adopted Black son, Jeanne speaks openly with women about parenting, career pressures, flexibility, stress management, and self-care.
She does not present balance as something easily mastered. Instead, she describes it more realistically as an ongoing act of prioritization and delegation.
“Honestly, some days are easier than others,” she says.
Creating More Inclusive Paths to Leadership
Jeanne’s commitment to inclusion is deeply personal.
As a child, she watched her father persevere through racism to become one of the first Black students to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from Louisiana State University.
Those experiences helped shape her belief that talent should not be constrained by race, gender, religion, orientation, or background.
Throughout her career, she has founded and supported initiatives including Foley’s African American Attorneys Affinity Group, the Black Patent Network, and the Chicago Black Partners Alliance.
For Jeanne, these efforts are not separate from business performance. She believes diverse teams produce stronger thinking because people with different experiences identify risks, opportunities, and solutions that others may miss.
That same philosophy influences her outlook on the future of intellectual property law.
She expects issues surrounding artificial intelligence, blockchain, global IP protection, and the treatment of AI-enabled inventions to become increasingly important. At the same time, she believes the profession must continue expanding access and opportunity.
For Jeanne M. Gills, progress in law is ultimately about more than adapting to new technologies.
It is about making sure the people shaping those technologies, protecting them, litigating over them, and building businesses around them represent a wider range of experiences and perspectives.
Her career demonstrates what becomes possible when technical expertise, legal judgment, relationships, and inclusive leadership are treated not as separate strengths, but as parts of the same equation.
Read her Full Interview on Exeleon – https://exeleonmagazine.com/jeanne-m-gills-bridging-law-technology-and-leadership
Also Read: The Power of Independent Women in a Changing World
