The Real Lawyer: Ryne Miller (Part 1)

In this episode, Ryne Miller discusses his journey into law, shaped by his upbringing in Yukon, Oklahoma, and global experiences studying in England and volunteering in Thailand. These moments broadened his perspective and led him to law school at the University of Oklahoma. Ryne also shares his entrepreneurial ventures, passion for contracts law, and how law school prepared him for his legal career.

Transcript

Joyce Sophia Xu (00:03.362)
Welcome to the Real Lawyer podcast, where we get real about life, working in law, and everything in between. I'm Joyce Sophia Hsu, and our guest today is Mr. Ryan Miller, a leading regulatory lawyer specializing in commodities, futures, and crypto. Ryan has worked as legal counsel to the chairman of the CFTC, as partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, and also as general counsel at FTX US.

Most recently, Ryan had founded and managed his own law firm, Miller Strategic Partners. In today's episode, I get to talk to Ryan during his very first week at his brand new job. We chat about that and Ryan also takes us back in time and tells us about his path to law school. I hope you enjoy.

Joyce Sophia Xu (01:02.318)
Hi, Ryan. How are you? Hi, Joyce. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Welcome to The Real Lawyer. And thanks for making time for us, because I know it's your very first week at your brand new job. That's right. That's right. I started at a new firm this week. I can tell you about that. can tell you about anything you want to know. fantastic. Congratulations.

So yeah, please do. Please tell us what the new position is. I know that you gave me the heads up a few weeks ago, but wouldn't tell me the details because it wasn't public yet. So I'm all ears. Great. Thank you. Sure. So I started this week as a partner in the New York City office of Lowenstein Sandler. Lowenstein Sandler is a full service law firm, almost 400 lawyers, not quite. And the practices I'm going to be doing here, I'm the chair of a commodities futures and derivatives practice.

which for your audience who might not be CFTC experts, it just means the CFTC practice across the board, regulatory transactions and investigations. And in parallel with that, I'm the co-chair of the Loewenstein Crypto Practice. And with crypto markets sort of coming back, at least on prices, there's a lot of activity in the space and I'm excited to have a platform here to work with that group. congratulations again. That's super exciting.

Cause you know, just heard a few days ago, the term crypto summer. It seems like the timing of your, your move is just perfect. The crypto industry, it's a lowercase I is active. There's, there's a lot of commercial activity for the first time in a while. The U S is being really looked at as an option where you can start up and launch your business. And that's really been a regulatory issue. The answer for the past two years has just been avoid the United States.

with some of the recent changes, there's gonna be new personnel in different roles. The US is back in it. And I think, I mean, I'm seeing a lot of companies reach out and say, what are our options in the US now? Where might the regulatory environment go? And those are questions we love to get. And you're really the perfect person to ask these questions to, right? You're one of the commodities law experts who really got into this space early.

Joyce Sophia Xu (03:25.87)
And I mean, you and I have known each other through work for what? A good decade now. And I started advising on crypto and crypto derivatives back in 2018. And by that time you were already spending a lot of your time on crypto. think I'm a step short of an early settler in crypto, but you know, as early as the middle 2000 teens, we started hearing from

people who were trading it, trading, buying and selling Bitcoin, and then buying and selling Ether, and then they started forming hedge funds, they started doing venture capital, and it has just grown from there to exchanges and infrastructure and projects. It's been a fun space, and I think folks who've been around it many years, and there's a lot of us, are optimistic that we're still just beginning. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it is just getting started, and it's

a whole different infrastructure being built, which is exciting. Sure. I mean, the assumption is we're talking about crypto and financial services, but you go out and talk to the builders and the entrepreneurs and the developers and financial services is one thing that will be impacted by crypto, but it will touch media. will touch technology generally and data and record keeping across all businesses. So.

It's much bigger than just financial services, although that's an important part of it. Agreed. Agreed. Well, there's just so much excitement in your voice and I could talk to you about what's happening in that space for hours. But for today, I want to take a step back and focus on Ryan Miller. I'd love to hear more about your journey.

Yeah, the story of Ryan Miller. Yes. It's not all that exciting, but I'm happy to share it. I know this one very well So I I grew up in Oklahoma a town a suburb of Oklahoma City called Yukon Is this you want me to go this far back sort of dig through all of this? This will be much this will be much more fun than talking about derivatives yeah, and it gives it a give more a little maybe for for this audience a little more interesting color

Joyce Sophia Xu (05:45.646)
The town of Yukon is, I don't know, 20,000, 30,000 people? It's probably bigger now. The one thing about it that was notable is there's a famous country singer who's from there. His name is Garth Brooks. Everyone knows Garth Brooks. He's from Yukon, and so we all knew early on we were never gonna do better than Garth Brooks. the ceiling was already set, so we were all free to go on and live our lives and chase our dreams.

At one point, I don't know what my dreams were, but I went from UConn to Oklahoma State University. So that's where I went for undergrad. And I was an economics major. It was in the business school, learned some finance and economics and accounting. My first year at Oklahoma State, I played on the rugby team, which was fascinating because we got to travel around to all the other schools in the Southwest and play rugby.

And it was enjoyable. It was a nice compliment to going to class. My second year of undergraduate of college, I spent in England on an exchange program. So I went to the University of Hertfordshire, which is the school, don't know, about 30 minutes, 40 minutes outside of London. And it was the one school that partnered with Oklahoma State where I could go study abroad in an English speaking country for a whole year. And so I spent my sophomore year.

in England and made all sorts of good friends in the UK, many of which I'm still in touch with. And academically, it was much like any undergraduate program. You just continued studying the relevant classes. But culturally, it exposed me to an entirely new world. I mean, if you're from Oklahoma and I'm not from a family that traveled internationally. So this is the first time I got on a plane that left the United States was the day I moved to London and I landed.

I'll always remember this, I landed at the London airport and I hadn't made any plans to get from the airport to the university. And I didn't really know how I was going to navigate this path. So I started asking, like I found a bus. I took a couple of buses and I eventually, I walked like a mile uphill carrying all my bags. You know, this lost 20 year old in the UK for the first time, but it was a great year. I grew a lot. learned a lot. With a great memory. Thanks for sharing.

Joyce Sophia Xu (08:04.242)
that with us, Ryan. So it sounds like that experience really opened your eyes to the world outside of Oklahoma. It was a growth period for sure where, I mean, I had done in high school, I guess, like most lawyers, I did just fine. And being from Oklahoma, the reason I went to undergraduate and law school in Oklahoma,

is they really try to help with scholarships and things. And so was affordable to stay where I grew up. But I was able to add on these study abroad experiences. It's sort of cliche, I felt really drawn to pursue something where I got an educational experience outside of where I had grown up. And it proved itself to be very valuable.

Like I said, I still have friends. You know, if I go to the UK, I see those folks. When they come to New York, we get together. These are guys I went to school with 20 years ago, and yet we're still friends. And then I came back, I finished at Oklahoma State the next year. my undergrad was three years. And then the summer, and I was going to go to law school in the fall. So I finished undergrad, graduated in May, and then was going to law school in the fall, that August, at the University of Oklahoma.

And I spent that summer between the two, between undergrad and law school in Thailand, believe it or not, a friend had invited me to go with him and we were volunteer English teachers. And there was a program there where if you had a US college degree and you were willing to spend three months, you could be sort of a teacher's assistant to the teachers who live there. That was their profession. And you would be a native English speaker and you got, and it was mostly college age students. And so they liked having someone.

who was able to show up, interact, be social with people. that was following on the London experience, following on finishing college, now spending three months in Thailand. I was no longer really as Oklahoma as I thought I was. And I had started to become someone with a broader perspective and who had seen and experienced different things. But then I go back to law school at the University of Oklahoma. And like everyone's 1L year, if you've gone to law school, it's a lot of work. You do tons of readings.

Joyce Sophia Xu (10:22.51)
You're getting called on by the teachers. Compared to undergrad, me, law school was much more work. And I still had this draw to not want to be in Oklahoma, yet I was enrolled in a law degree that was going to take three years at the school there. And so I figured out a way my second year of law school to do most of that year at a law school in Bangkok, again, through a study abroad program. And so a decent chunk of my 2L year,

I studied at courses, they were English language law courses on international business law, but at a law school in Bangkok, Thailand. And so I had really enjoyed the country. I'd made a bunch of friends there. And once I found out it was possible to continue my JD, but to do part of it over there, I pursued that and had, again, a great experience. Played on a rugby team inside of Thailand. We traveled all around the country playing different teams.

I'm still friends with a lot of those folks as well. Eventually came back to finish my 3L year and got my JD. During my 3L year, I got married. I had met my wife in Thailand. I see. Well, I had met your wife and she's amazing. I just had always assumed that you met in New York City. I didn't know that you met her in Thailand. That's cool. She's so much fun and you're just so lucky to have her.

She reminds me that. As she should. She had been a teacher at the English school where I first volunteered at and we stayed in touch and now three years later we got married and we're still married. We've been I think 17 years. We're old now. So it's that's that's the beginning of where we are today. And then when we go back to Thailand I still have tons of friends from that law school experience. So and they're all going about their careers and doing different things. And of course I have you know my

my network of folks I grew up with that we still stay in touch with too. But I think one unique aspect of life is, your network is in fact your network and you only know the people you know. And so you have to do some work to add some context and perspective to your network. Ryan, it really sounds like during your college years and your law school years, you lived a lot of life and

Joyce Sophia Xu (12:48.3)
You took the opportunity to grow and expand. And I was listening to you talking about these experiences. And I was kind of asking myself in my head, what was I up to during my college years and law school years? And I certainly didn't have such a big variety of experiences and travels. Those years for me were just all about getting

the degree, getting the training, getting the job, getting to the next place where I thought I was supposed to be at. And now I look back and I think, maybe I could have done it a little differently. Maybe I could have been more open to different experiences and that probably could have really enriched me. So I think it's really wonderful that you just went out into the world in search of these different experiences.

And it sounds like they really shaped you into the person that you are today. Well, you got to go to, I think I remember you went to Davis Polk or Simpson Thatcher or maybe both of them. But you got to go there right after law school. I wasn't as smart as you. And so I had to add all these extra things to my profile in order to become interesting and eventually found my way to a law firm. But I assure you, I was not on their list of candidates after I finished my JD.

Well, I don't know if smarts was really the deciding factor, but thank you, Ryan. That's very kind of you to say. And I absolutely agree that you certainly made yourself very, very interesting and very unique. So let's talk about law school for a minute. Tell me more about what led you to law school. Was that something that you always wanted to do?

No, I think it's helpful to... What did I... So I worked through high school, through college, and through law school. In high school, I was mostly a construction worker, and I worked at a fast food restaurant, as everyone should. In college, I was the janitor of the dorms. I was very good at it. I could clean toilets and bathrooms and hallways. I was the best janitor. And in law school, when I did this semester in Thailand, there was this market there.

Joyce Sophia Xu (15:14.99)
that it had all these old clothes from the United States, like vintage T-shirts and things. And like some of them had become quite collectible back in the United States. So on the weekends, I would take this bus to like the border of Cambodia and Thailand where they had all these clothes that Americans would donate to the East, to Southeast Asia. And you could go through and pick out like the cool ones. And then I would sell them on eBay back to the United States. And that was sort of how I paid for that period of time.

in Thailand for six or seven months as a law student with no job. So that's funny, that's interesting. It doesn't answer your question as to why I wanted to become a lawyer. My older brother, he's 10 years older than me, is a lawyer and he's a very successful lawyer. He's an estate and trust partner at a national law firm. And like me, he grew up in suburban Oklahoma and we didn't have lawyers in our family before him.

And it seemed clear that I was not going to be a professional athlete of any type, not my path. And so my brother was a lawyer. He seemed to be going well. And so I went to law school. when I finished college, I said I finished in three years, I wasn't sure what to do next. I wasn't quite ready to go into the corporate world. And the University of Oklahoma was able to give me some scholarships where it made sense to go to law school. I didn't quite know what I was going to do with it.

but I knew it was gonna be a valuable use of time. And so through those three years of getting the JD, I really started to enjoy what the practice of law could be. And I do enjoy the day-to-day work now, many years later, but I went to law school probably because my brother's a lawyer and just kept going from there. Well, it's nice that you had your brother to kind of introduce you to the field.

And it also sounds like, you you yourself have always been so driven and have that strong work ethic where you're like, you know, whatever's the task at hand, I'm going to give it my all. And you've always been also kind of entrepreneurial. So I'm sure the combination of all of that helped you a lot through law school. Well, the alternative was to get a job somewhere. And I'm not opposed to that. I just don't think I was very employable after I finished my bachelor's degree.

Joyce Sophia Xu (17:43.016)
and, and, you know, the law school had a lot of good prospects about it. I'm glad I went. I'd love to hear more about your law school experience. Did you have some memorable highs and lows and was it what you expected or was any aspect of it surprising to you? I remember going to law school and having no idea.

what to expect, like what this process was supposed to do. I had done very little research on the front end of it. And I remember going to buy the books the first day or whatever before the first day of class. The books were gigantic and you must have the same memory. I know they were. They were huge and they were also very expensive. And I was like, am I gonna read all of these? And I guess in theory, I read most of them, but the books for law score are huge. Maybe they're online now. I remember that. I remember carrying them around.

But I also remember most schools do this. In your first year, you get put in a pod or a cohort or a group. And that's the group you do most of your classes with in the first year. And we did that at the University of Oklahoma. And I made a lot of great friends there, many of which I still talk to. I like that community aspect of it. But I remember the heavy books for sure. And then I guess the third thing, particularly for the first year, is those terrifying moments when the professors call on you and

expect you to share some thoughts that sound reasonably well-formed on legal questions that you have no idea what the answers are. So the Socratic Method was in parts terrifying, but in parts helpful in teaching you how to become a lawyer. Yeah, right. The Socratic Method, that brings back memories. Did you get caught on a lot?

In my day, and I'm old now, I guess, but in my day at the University of Oklahoma, which is great law school, really good law school, I'm proud to have gone there. Yeah, we had traditional old school professors and I took a class. The Socratic method was a big part of how they taught the in-class part of the instruction. Yeah. So what was your favorite class? Did you have one?

Joyce Sophia Xu (19:59.138)
Well, contracts, it has to have been contracts. that was mine too. I doubt any of my professors will ever listen to this, but Professor Miller, we had the same last name, was sort of a well-known contracts professor. And he just knew so much about the uniform commercial code and common law issues around contracts. I was impressed by how much he knew and he taught it in a way that was very accessible. So I liked contracts.

Do you think back to law school sometimes and think, you know, I'm actually using, like, that was helpful. That was something that I actually could integrate into my work now and it's a useful skill set. I think to me is that law school forces you to find out your style and find out your approach. You can't fake it. You really do have to access the material.

in some way. Maybe you don't read every page. Maybe that's not the kind of person you are and that's not usually the kind of person I was. But you needed to understand these cases. And you did sometimes have to sit down and do the work of reading through the materials, discussing it with your colleagues. And it forced you to figure out what your style was. And I think now as a practicing lawyer, the thing that is most relevant is law school puts you in these moments where you've got a lot of material.

You need to consume it very quickly and analyze it in a sharp, smart way, and then represent it to someone, whether it's your client or a judge or someone else. And what law school teaches you is what is your style to get that done.

Joyce Sophia Xu (21:43.352)
Thank you so much for listening to part one of my conversation with Ryan Miller. I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you will be notified about future episodes. And be sure to also tune in for part two of our conversation where we talk a lot more in depth about the evolution of Ryan's legal career after law school. A lot more to come. Until then, be well and be happy.