Founder of LaPolt Law, P.C. shares her story of activism, sobriety, and shaping the future of IP law.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Dina LaPolt, Founder of LaPolt Law, P.C., about her journey from musician to powerhouse attorney. Dina shares how her advocacy and activism led to landmark legislation and a bold new chapter with her book, podcast, and media venture.
About Dina Lapolt
Dina LaPolt is the founder of LaPolt Law, P.C., one of the most influential entertainment law firms, and the only one of its stature solely owned by a female attorney. Based in Los Angeles, she specializes in entertainment and intellectual property law, representing global superstars and handling complex legal matters like copyrights and trademarks. A highly decorated industry leader, she has been recognized by Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Super Lawyers, and has received prestigious awards, including the Billboard Women in Music Hall of Fame induction and the Recording Academy’s Service Award. Dina has played a key role in shaping entertainment legislation, including the 2018 Music Modernization Act, the RAP Act, and the No Fakes Act, which protect artists’ rights. She co-founded Songwriters of North America (SONA) and is an executive leader of the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC). In 2025, she expanded her influence with LaPolt Media, launching a book, Street Smart: Succeeding in a Man’s World, and a podcast, The Stiletto Room, aimed at inspiring and amplifying bold voices. A passionate advocate for change, Dina has been sober since 1998, demonstrating resilience and dedication to her craft.
Watch Full Interview:
Full Unedited Transcript
All right, so our next guest today is Dina LaPolt. Dina LaPolt is founder of LaPolt Law PC based in Los Angeles. She specializes in entertainment and intellectual property law representing global superstars. She has been recognized by Billboard, the Hollywood Reporter Variety, and has received prestigious awards including the Billboard, women in Music Hall of Fame induction, and the Recording Academy’s service award.
Dina has played a key role in shaping entertainment legislation, including the 2018 Music Modernization Act, the Rap Act, and the No Fakes Act, which protects artists’ rights. In 2025, she expanded her influence with LaPolt Media. Launching a book, street Smart, succeeding in a Man’s World, and a podcast The Still Outta Rome.
Join me in welcoming dean of the stage.
Adam. Ah, finally person. Yes, I’m sorry. No, you’re fine. Please. I’ll get you a handshake. Steven Tyler told me that a handshake is. Mono and a hug is in stereo. Oh, I’ll take that. Yeah, that’s that. I’m in for the stereo. Okay. Um, hi everybody. Okay, so Dina, we got a lot to talk about today. Okay. We’re excited.
They need to go eat or something. Yep. Oh, we’re good. Um, so we got a book, we got a podcast lock that’s some that’s out, some that’s on the horizon. But I wanna go back in time a bit here. And, you know, we talk about breaking into music, breaking into the entertainment industry. How did you break into entertainment law?
Um, well, I was a musician, so I started out as an artist. I went to college on a music scholarship. I have a bachelor’s degree in music, and then I met Eric Carr from Kiss who at the time was the drummer before he passed away, and I started becoming, I was his personal assistant. And I also was a tour manager for some of his all female thrash bands, Harry Carey.
Anyway, long story short kiss, moved to the West coast ’cause they were in the East Coast and I got my degree in music and I ended up going to the West coast thinking I was gonna stay with, you know, work for them. Um, and he died ’cause he had a brain tumor. Anyway. I just longed around with a degree in guitar, working at Enterprise rent a car, teaching guitar lessons to kids.
And then I decided to go to law school. I mean, I was a manager for a while, but that was fucking horrible. Um, you know, I was always in a band, but I hated being on the road, and I still do. So I was like, okay, what can I do? I can, I hate management. I hate being on the road, so I can’t be an agent. Well, I can’t be an accountant, which is a business manager ’cause I’m, I can’t add, I’m dyslexic, so fuck it.
I’ll be a lawyer. That’s what I did. Yeah. What does that first job in law look like for you? Like, how did, how did that take place? Well, I didn’t really get a job because what happened is during law school, I really find I, I started a band. And then I also taught guitar lessons to kids. And when I graduated and passed the bar, my ex-girlfriend’s sister called me and she said, Hey, uh, she lived in la.
She goes, are you an entertainment lawyer yet? This was in 1997. I go, yeah, as of like 10 minutes ago. And she said, well, I’m Miss June and I’m on the cover of Playboy. Why don’t you come live with me? So within three days, I was living with Miss June, 1997 in Sherman Oaks and I spent the first 10 months up at the Playboy Mansion really fine tuning my drug and alcohol abuse.
Um, and then the Playmates didn’t an intervention on me, you know, March of 98, I got sober in April of 98, but I really couldn’t. I was unemployable, so I was interning for a music lawyer for free in Century City. Uh, so I could learn the ropes because even though I, I’d been in music my whole life, I’d been on the creative side, so I didn’t know jack shit about anything.
Um, and I interned for him for free, parked at the Century City Mall, would walk to work on Avenue of the Stars, which, so it only cost me $11 a day to get to my internship. And then I waited tables at night until I sobered up. And then one of their clients was the Tupac Shakur estate. ’cause Tupac had just been shot in 1996.
And I met his mom. She was a client of the firm. She loved me right away. I was like four months sober. Um, she and I connected on that. I said, are you sober? She goes, you girl. 13 years off crack cocaine. And I’ll go, oh my God, I love you. I’m an alcoholic. And we were together ever since. Anyway, um, she encouraged me to open my own firm.
That’s how I opened my own firm. Yeah. So one of the things I know you for in your work and just reading the bio and some of the other things I’ve seen, um, is artists advocacy. Yeah. Was did you go into this with that theme or did that, how did that I grew up as an activist. Yeah. So my mother was a, an activist and a, and a community leader in the black.
Community. And my dad was in prison reform for 40 years. That’s how I grew up. And actually, like, I didn’t listen to Tupac, but I knew who Afeni Shakur was because she was one of the original Panther 20 ones arrested in 1969, represented herself and got herself off. Um, but I grew up on her through my mother, so I knew who she was.
So I was always an activist. And even in law school when I started my band, I. It, it is funny story. I was in law school. My study partner says, oh, you wanna go here? The Indigo Girls? I go, who the fuck are they? They’re like, they’re at the Concor Pavilion, which is a town over from my law school in Northern California.
She’s like, it’s sold out arena show. We should go. And I go to this concert and I’m like, I was like, this music is amazing, but these are 20,000 of the manliest women I’ve ever met in my life in this building. So I said, I’m gonna start a lipstick lesbian band and I’m gonna play music like this. So I did.
So when I was in law school, I was in this lipstick lesbian band, and I advocated for gay rights from the stage. And we had a residency for three and a half years in, in San Francisco Bay Area. And then I played all these gay pride parades all over the country during the summer. So I’ve always been an advocate.
And actually in law school there was one. My study partner, Lita, was the only black woman in the law school, so I started the Black Student Union. So I did too. She wouldn’t even be in there ’cause she was too busy. I said, just be on the posters. Give it some credibility. Love it. So the billboard recognition, some of the other organizations, some of the legislation that you either led or your name’s tied to.
Yeah. Talk a little bit about that experience. Yeah. So let me tell you, I’ve always been an activist and I always liked, and I always help people and I’ll be 27 years sober in April. God, Willie. Yes. So the premise of that is help people and stop thinking about yourself, which is really hard. ’cause then as, as an addict, I’m an egomaniac with a in fity complex.
So I’ve gotta be careful about all that. So I help people. That’s what I do. So being a, an activist, I’ve always been an activist. And then. You know, when I’m, when Steven Tyler and became a client, he and I started doing things together in activism, like copyright reform and stuff like that. Um, but it wasn’t until I formed the songwriters of North America in 2016 with some stupid government mandate that devastated the songwriting community.
And not to bore everybody, but in music, the the, there’s two copyrights. The copyright and the sound recording and the copyright and the musical composition and the copyright and the sound recording. You can negotiate in a free market. It’s usually owned by the record company, but the copyright and the musical composition is all regulated by the government through antiquated portions of government decrees that were enacted over Ascom BMI in the 1940s and compulsory licensing regimes.
You know, that regulate all the other income streams, so it’s really burdensome. So when the Department of Justice decided they were going to help the streamers, they put together this thing that came out as Full Works licensing, and it would’ve devastated the songwriting community. So I gathered some songwriters, I explained to them what it is, ask them.
BMI are like, well, we’re gonna work on this, just trust us. But I’m like, we gotta sue the fucking government. Like, this is terrible. And you know, the ask them BMI are like, no, no, don’t, you’re gonna, you’re gonna ruin it for us. I was like, huh. And people were calling me going, um. You know, you’re gonna put your, you know, you’re gonna put your practice out of business.
Nobody’s gonna want you. I’m like, nobody’s wanted me ever, so what the fuck? You know what I mean? And if Fannie would tell me, you have two choices in life. You could either give in or give it all you got. I was like, fuck it. Let’s just sue the Department of Justice. So I found a litigator who would do it pro bono.
I gathered like a hundred songwriters. I educated them all on what? It was going on, and these were some huge songwriters that wrote like Christina Aguilera hits and all these things. So anyway, then, um, we did it, we filed a lawsuit against the DOJ alleging that because the songwriters were third party beneficiaries of these government decrees entered into by Ask BMI in 1940.
That it was, you know, they were, they were third party beneficiaries of this and it was unlawfully taking their property without their permission in violation of the United States Constitution takings clause. So that was what we alleged. Anyway, it was really fun. Um, the Department of Justice quickly settled with us and char and turned the law back.
’cause I rallied all these huge artists and songwriters that were coming out. On social media and just, it was a uprising. And then it put us on the map as far as like with the politicians. And then we kind of, they would call me, all these big Congress members and senators would call me. They’d be like, Hey, some organization was in here today telling me they help artists.
And I, and I ask who it is. They’re like Sony Music, I fuck them, they’re lying. They’d be like, oh great, I’m glad I called you. You know what I mean? So I had these people on speed dial and then just one thing after another. And you know, we put together this bill that that passed in 2018. So it was good.
Helps songwriters. But there’s two other bills that I’m working on now. I gotta tell you. So one is called the No Fakes Act, which would create a federal right of voice and likeness, which is huge in America. So right now, all these deep fakes. That you wake up, like I woke up like two, two years ago to a number one song by Drake in 21 Savage, only for Savage’s manager to call me ’cause he’s my client and said, this isn’t us.
I go, uh, so like this is happening all over, these deep faith. So this would create a federal rite of voice and likeness, which would be a new intellectual property, right? Which would create a massive income stream for. You know, celebrities and music artists, anybody who’s got a public image, so someone couldn’t use your name or likeness for commercial appropriation unless they licensed it for you, and if they didn’t license it from you, then what you could do is sue them like copyright and trademark.
And there’d be statutory damages, just like copyright and trademarks. That’s super, super, super important. The other thing I’m doing, which pay attention, I’m gonna give you some secret shit now. Thursday is gonna be announced. It’s gonna, it’s called Free Our Art. And what it is, it’s basically. Because everything in America now is Republican.
Okay. And believe it or not, copyright is a Republican issue. Okay? Which is why I got the bill passed when Donald Trump was president the first time. ’cause everybody else was falling apart at the seams, but copyright was strong. But anyway, so this thing that I’m working on and I’m, it is called like it’s a Restoring Artistic Protection Act.
Act. So basically what’s happening in America are prosecutors are using creative expressions against creators as evidence of their guilt, and it’s mostly happening to black rap artists. So there’s currently over 500 black men sitting in prison in America. Because the government used their lyrics against them as evidence of guilt with no other evidence.
Okay? So we got the law passed here in California. Three years ago. It’s called the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act. So one of the organizations, I’m on the Executive Leadership Committee of the Black Music Action Coalition. So we got that law passed in California, believe it or not, we got it passed in Louisiana.
’cause we made it about First Amendment. Republicans love First Amendment and guns. So we made it about First Amendment. Got that passed. It’s actually now pending in Georgia. Pending in New York. And the federal version of that bill is called the Restoring Artistic Protection Act. And it’s being reintroduced again in the house probably like in a month.
But this, this whole campaign is being lost, launched on Thursday. And I do all that like volunteer because it makes me happy. So I wanna spend some of the time that we have left here, uh, getting into Laal Media and some of the ecosystem that you’re creating, whether it’s your book. Whether it’s, uh, the stiletto room, like, talk to me a little bit about the vision.
Yeah. Okay. Let me tell you this real quick. So when I started my firm, it, now it’s 10 lawyers, 15 people total. You know, a publisher reached out to me three years ago, said, I’ve been following you for a long time. I want to do a motivational book. I, you know, can you do it? And I was like, huh. And I basically, after I got under the hood, said, yes, we’ll do it.
Got, you know, worked with him on it. Got it done. It took a year to get it done. But it’s called, um, street Smart, succeeding in a Man’s World. You can get it now, you could pre-order it now on Amazon or whatever, and it comes out October 7th. But really it is a, a guide to how I got to where I was with a lot of obstacles, like the first chapter’s called Overcoming Predisposition to Obstacles.
You know, I mean, I’m in a business with a lot of white strike guy, white straight guys a lot. Okay? And when I first became a lawyer, there was only two women music lawyers that anybody knew. That’s it. And there was zero people of color. I was like, what the fuck is going on? So everything has changed, but I’ve overcome these obstacles to get where I was, not with the traditional method of being in a big law firm and whose parents are famous, or whose dad runs a record company, whatever.
So, and then the second chapter is called, you know, believe in Yourself, put Yourself First, third chapter is called Shit, or Get Off the Pot. Fourth chapter is called. Uh, use your emotional intelligence and fine tune your intuition, and it goes on and on and on. And it’s all like, it all is interweaving with all my stories throughout my life of every obstacle I overcame to get to where I was.
So with that, you know, that comes out October 7th and everybody’s like, you should do a podcast first to promote it and have some of the people on the podcast. So that’s when I met y’all, you and Matt and, uh, rag. And we have the podcast that we’re now filming. We have 12 episodes done and we have another 12 to go.
And it’s debuts sometime like the end of May, early June. Right. Schrag, that’s it. And it’s called The Stiletto Room. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, um, we’re gonna make time for one question. Dina, I know you got, you got something after this, but one question. Who, who’s got it? We got one for it. Um, okay, so my past life I worked for Sony Music and I run the tail end of, um, going from traditional radio to DSPs.
Oh God. And so that was kind of phase two, but I think there’s another phase that I have yet to identify. You’re kind of poised to be in the right position to know where the music industry’s going. Yes. He used to work for Sony Music, so those guys, people didn’t hear him and he was on the promotion side radio.
What’s the next phase? It’s ai, artificial intelligence. So that is the next phase, and that is why the No Fakes act is huge. When we get that passed, it’s a bipartisan bill. Okay? So it should pass because even though they all hate each other over there in Washington, this should be a bipartisan bill and it is, but that’s gonna create huge, huge, huge opportunities in entertainment.
Huge. Because it’s a brand new, right, intellectual property, right? So of course record companies who traditionally love to overreach, you know, they’ll start departments, you know, where you can license ’em to your right, a voice and likeness, and they’ll go and bring deals and all these things. So it’ll be good.
So do you see more positive than negative? Um, there’s two things with ai. The positive as of it is, is that creators do use generative AI to, to make music, which is good. You have to, you know what I mean? And, and, and, but the, the creator is still though unicorn guiding the process. It’s not, you know what I mean?
So. That’s a good thing. The bad news is a lot of these, these services like Chat, GPT and these, these AI modules, they’re not paying to use copyrighted works when they’re training their systems. So, you know, you could go to chat GPT and you could say, Hey, write me a song that sounds like Taylor Swift in the style of Lady Gaga.
And in four seconds flat, you have this. Song and you know, they, they need to be paying record companies and publishers. To train their modules on these creative elements that they’re using. So that’s in the works right now. Okay. And we’re calling for like a voluntary licensing thing, which will probably never happen, but compulsory license is better than voluntary, but, and then also on top of that is, you know, getting the new, um, right.
Protected the voice and likeness. So that’s the good part about it. The bad part about AI is. Creating deep fakes that have nothing to do with you, that you can’t stop, that are making money off you and you can’t stop it. Or these systems that are training everybody on all this music training, all their systems on all this music and not, not paying licensing fees for that.
So it, I know it’s complicated, but this is my wheelhouse. Alright, well, well let’s all thank Dina for coming out.