Background
Ethnicity:
Ronald's mother's parents were born in Mexico. His father's family is of Irish and English ancestry.
Ronald Schuler was born in February 1963 in Whittier, California, United States.
Education
Schuler served as student body president of two different high schools: Lowell High School in Whittier, California (1980) and La Habra High School (1980-81).
At Pomona College, after briefly considering pursuing entomology, Schuler ended up as an English Literature major, with significant coursework in Film (including under well-known film preservationist David Shepard and screenwriter Miles Swarthout) and Philosophy (under Frederick Sontag, among others). He served as editor and publisher of the five-college weekly newsmagazine of the Claremont Colleges, COLLAGE, and as a senior producer/newsreader at the college radio station, KSPC-FM. In 1984, he was one of the founders of a national network of college radio stations formed in order to cover the 1984 presidential election, IES (Intercollegiate Election System), which received grants from Norman Lear and People for the American Way. Near the end of his time at Pomona, he worked as a research assistant to Beverly Palmer on her publication of the letters of Charles Sumner, and as an intern with the Robert and Frances Flaherty (Film) Archive at the Claremont School of Theology. Schuler won the Senior English Award at the time of his graduation from Pomona in 1985.
Schuler studied Arthurian texts and the 18th century novel at University College, Oxford University, during 1983.
After an extensive application and exam process, Schuler was a finalist for the Directors Guild of America's DGA Trainee program. He performed badly during the finalists' interview process, uncharacteristically getting into an argument with one of the interviewers, an old second unit director named Wallace Worsley, Jr.
Schuler was accepted to the Master's program in Film at USC, but opted to go to law school instead. While at Cornell Law School, he was the editor of the school newspaper, DICTA.
Career
Ron Schuler has been an attorney in the Pittsburgh region for more than 30 years, has served as a senior operating officer of a $100+ million regional oil and gas company, and has been recognized as a working contributor to many of the region’s economic development initiatives. He began his career as an associate at the firm of Buchanan Ingersoll, practicing in the areas of corporate finance, public offerings, venture capital, technology matters, and mergers and acquisitions. He has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America for corporate law and in Chambers USA - America's Leading Lawyers for Business for Corporate M&A/Private Equity, and has earned an AV ("preeminent") peer review rating through Martindale-Hubbell. For seven years, Schuler was a lead member of the City of Pittsburgh's legal team for the planning and construction of PNC Park, home to Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates, and was the author of the "Forbes Field II Task Force Final Report" (1996), the urban planning justification for PNC Park's location. While at Buchanan, he was the editor of an in-house monthly satirical rag, THE BI BUGLE.
As a shareholder at Buchanan, Schuler was the founding co-chair of the firm's Biotechnology Group and worked half-time in the firm's London office. He left Buchanan in 2003 to help launch the Pittsburgh corporate group of the Virginia-based law firm of McGuireWoods; and in 2005, he joined PGMT Energy as senior vice president for corporate development, where he helped to lead the sale of the company to EXCO Resources for $115 million. He has served on numerous boards and public committees, including on the advisory council of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine; the Pennsylvania Governor's Life Sciences Greenhouse Committee; the technology advisory committee of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse; the board of directors of JURIST, an online legal news service; and the board of directors of the University of Connecticut Foundation Research & Development Corporation. In 2001, he was named by the Pittsburgh Business Times as one of 25 "Changemakers" who have made significant contributions to the region's business and civic enterprises.
Schuler currently serves as Member-in-Charge of the Pittsburgh office of Spilman, Thomas & Battle, a Charleston, West Virginia-based firm. He was twice named Best Lawyers' Pittsburgh Mergers and Acquisitions Law "Lawyer of the Year" (2015 and 2023), and has been included in the Pittsburgh Business Times' "Who's Who in Energy." He was elected as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation in 2021.
Schuler has been a frequent writer and lecturer on topics relating to the history of Pittsburgh, and in particular, its Bar. He has appeared as the keynote speaker at the annual dinners of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Academy of Trial Lawyers and the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Law Association, at a retreat of federal judges of the Western District of Pennsylvania, and, with Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy, at a "diversity day" celebration of the federal courts in Pittsburgh. For several years, he was one of the presenters at the Federal Bar Association's annual "Whiskey Rebellion" CLE program, and he has been a panelist at the Allegheny County Bar Association's annual Bankruptcy Symposium.
He is the author of an American history, The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of America (2019), and a novel of old Los Angeles, Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age (2020). His profile of actress Sonia Darrin, "Whatever Happened to Agnes Lowzier?", appeared in Noir City Sentinel Annual #3 (2011). In addition to scholarly legal publications, his pop history writings have been featured in such diverse publications as the Tulsa Geospectrum, the Spanish literary journal Yareah and the Society for American Baseball Research's BIO Project.