Ronald James Inawat

With a vibrant academic and professional career in the music, performing arts, and law arenas, R.J. Inawat is a skilled attorney with experience spanning many facets of the entertainment industry. In his independent legal practice, R.J. focuses on entertainment law, soft intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets), contract law, and business/entity formation and governance.

R.J.’s legal practice manifested through his comprehensive career in various sectors of the entertainment industry, including venue management, artist booking, record label A&R, radio marketing, live-event production (theatrical and non-theatrical), talent management, music licensing, product licensing, and comic book publishing.

Through Aspire Law as one of the firm’s Partners, R.J. lends his expertise to a myriad of individuals and companies across the entertainment and content-creation industries, building and executing on legal activities, contract negotiation, intellectual property management and commercial agreement drafting and editing.

Among those companies past and present include:

• Polarity, a media company with broad operations in comic book/graphic novel publishing, short and feature film animation and general media/content creation through its award-winning subsidiaries: Oni Press, Magnetic Press and Lion Forge Entertainment, co-producers of the 2019 Academy Award winning animated short film "Hair Love," the 2021 Daytime Emmy Award winning program "The Power of We: A Sesame Street Special," and the 2023 NATAS Mid-America Emmy award winning short-form content “Drawn In: Brave Hero, Part 2;”
• “Twihard: The Musical,” serving as the Production Counsel for its 2025 run at The Apollo Theater in Chicago, IL;
• Music Dealers, where he provided in-house legal counsel to a music licensing platform that provided authentic music for the advertising, television, film, and gaming industries, including the original compositions created for the Coca-Cola “Taste the Feeling” campaign for the 2016 Summer Olympics;
• The Bradford Exchange, where he negotiated and managed soft intellectual property licensing arrangements between artists, worldwide companies and brands for the company’s direct-to-consumer products; and
• The 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival Nominee for “Best Film" (US Fiction) Award, “The View from Tall,” serving as the feature film’s Production legal counsel.

R.J. is a DePaul University alumnus, having earned his Bachelor of Music in Performing Arts Management with minors in Management and Business Administration in 2005 as well as his Juris Doctor in 2013, and he continues to perform throughout the Chicagoland area as a freelance classical pianist. He also currently serves as an adjunct professor at DePaul University School of Music, teaching “Intro to Music Business” and “Legal Issues in the Music Industry” to undergraduate students as well as serving as faculty advisor for its student-run record label, Blue Demon Records.