Meet Ryan Newburn: The Strategist Behind INK’s Deals
There’s a version of a corporate lawyer who sits across the table, pushes paper, and bills by the hour.
Ryan Newburn is not that guy.
Ryan is INK’s founding partner for M&A, corporate, and business counsel — and before you get to the $18 billion in mergers and acquisitions he’s negotiated, or the $13 billion in debt and equity financings, you should probably know something else about him first.
Ryan is a family man first. A large family, a house full of kids, and at any given moment, at least one rescue dog.
Then there’s soccer. Ryan plays, not just watches. The game is in his system — the strategy of it, the movement, the way a good team reads each other without talking. It’s not hard to see why someone wired that way ended up becoming one of the sharpest negotiators in the room.
The Legal Career
Ryan came up through Big Law. Juris Doctor magna cum laude from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers School of Law, Order of the Coif, Articles Editor for the Arizona Law Review, Captain of the Jessup International Moot Court Team. He also holds an MBA and two undergraduate degrees — in Agricultural and Resource Economics and in Philosophy and Economics — from the same institution.
That combination isn’t accidental. Ryan thinks like a businessperson who happens to have a law degree, and it shows in how he approaches a deal.
He’s served as CEO of JuriCon, as a Chief Commercial Officer, and as General Counsel — roles that put him on the operator side of the table before he was ever on the attorney side. That experience means when a client is navigating a board of directors, managing investor relationships, or trying to close a transaction without blowing up the company culture, Ryan has been in that room before — not as a lawyer watching, but as an executive deciding.
What He Does at INK
Ryan leads the firm’s corporate and transactional practice. His work covers the full arc of a business’s life: formation, growth, capitalization, transactions, and acquisition. He guides partnerships, LLCs, nonprofits, S-corps, and C-corps and even wrote a book on Leveraged Buyouts. He handles commercial transactions, securities law, corporate finance, energy law, government law, and contract general counsel work.
The through-line is strategy. Ryan doesn’t just draft the agreement — he’s thinking two steps past it. What does this clause mean if the deal falls apart? What does this structure look like in three years? Where are the roadblocks, and how do we go around them before the other side finds them first?
He’s licensed in Colorado and California, and works with clients ranging from early-stage startups to billion-dollar public entities.
The Human Behind the Deal
Here’s the thing about someone who negotiates at the level Ryan does: they’re used to high stakes. Used to pressure. Used to making calls with incomplete information and a clock running.
Rescuing dogs and fostering them — especially when you have a large family already in motion — requires the same kind of composure. You don’t know what you’re getting when an animal comes through the door. You figure it out. You adapt. You create stability for something that didn’t have it.
That’s also what good corporate counsel does for a client in the middle of a messy deal.
Off the field, Ryan brings that same instinct to his clients. On the field, he’s playing soccer and probably thinking about the next move before the ball arrives.
That’s just how he’s built.
Ryan Newburn, Esq., M.B.A. | Founding Partner, INK™
M&A · Corporate · Business Counsel | ink.law
