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The Life and Career of Steven Shaw, Lawyer-Turned-Author and Founder of eGullet.com and thefatguy.com

published November 07, 2005

Published By
( 21 votes, average: 4.1 out of 5)
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The son of teachers, Shaw was blown away by the five-star dining and began asking the waiters questions about each and every ingredient, flavor, and extra fork. Although Shaw was offered a job with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP—his first interview and his first choice—he scheduled 50 other interviews just for the meals.

During Shaw's first trial as a litigation associate with Cravath, he worked on a case in Wilmington, DE, and started writing notes on a restaurant guide to the city, which he circulated among his attorney friends. That was the start of his food-writing career.


"It was so poorly written. People make fun of it now," Shaw told LawCrossing over coffee and éclairs at New York's famed Veniero's Pasticceria & Café. Shaw eventually moved to a boutique law firm and then to Lehman Brothers, where a big part of his job was wining and dining clients in some of the city's finest restaurants.

"I realized I liked the food business more than the law business," he said. Shaw started writing restaurant reviews in his spare time and sending them off to publications like the New York Times and Gourmet. What he didn't know then was that those publications do not accept freelance restaurant reviews. In 1997, he started a website and posted all his reviews. The word blog had yet to be invented, and only the most computer-savvy and those with $50 extra per month had a website. Shaw said he had a small following of about 50 readers, mainly lawyers and his mother.

Then a New York Times reporter noticed the site, and overnight, Shaw's readership increased markedly. Soon he was writing for Salon.com under the moniker The Fat Guy, with his first story, "Fat Guys Kick Ass," proving to be one of the most popular stories ever posted on the site. Shaw changed the baroquely named shaw.reviews.com to thefatguy.com and decided to quit his job to write and practice law on the side.

"It was all sort of triggered by impulse and terror," he said. "After I left Lehman Brothers, I kept a few clients, and I picked up a few others, and I had a client out west who was trying to turn around this semiconductor company. And they wanted me to move out there for a few months and work on their turnaround team, and I had several deadlines. I stood to make $1,500 writing or $30,000 from them."

Shaw knew that the financial temptation would always win if he didn't make a clean break and write. His wife, a photojournalist, was going through a similar transition from a more lucrative editing job. Shaw chose the $1,500.

"We just said, 'Let's go cold turkey and just write,'" he said. "So many writers had told us by then that you can't do something else; it just doesn't work. So we did it."

When asked what Shaw would advise other attorneys thinking of pursuing a creative passion outside the law. Save money.

"That's a big mistake that I made, I saved up enough to live for a year. I think you should save up enough to live for three years because it takes a really long time to establish yourself in another career," he said. "And when I look back at all the money I spent on that extra suit and that extra pair of shoes that I didn't really need, and now I could have paid a month's rent with that money, I feel stupid."

When he quit the law to write, Shaw said his family and friends just presumed he was an "unemployed loser." When he first quit, he was trying to sell a book called The Fat Guy, based on the humorous essays he'd written for Salon. But publishers thought it was too controversial. Now that Turning the Tables has been a success, his agent sold The Fat Guy in 10 minutes.

Shaw said his friends no longer think he's a loser; they just want to know when the next book is coming out, how many copies he has sold, and how much he gets paid. With two writers working out of a small home office in New York City, Shaw said he and his wife have a system of emailing each other from the same room so they remember what they want to talk about, but don't interrupt each other when one or the other is writing.

Although Shaw keeps his law license up to date and helps his friends in traffic court and with other small cases, he said he has no plans to return to practice unless he has to financially. He said his most important advice to people leaving the law for another career is to enjoy it. While researching Turning the Tables, Shaw worked in every area of the restaurant business.

"I didn't want to just assemble a bunch of essays, which I think makes for a boring book. So I decided what I should really do in order to write the insider's guide to restaurants was to work in every position in the business. So I made arrangements with restaurants across the country to be a waiter, work in the kitchen, work as a reservationist, work with the porter," he said. "I also expanded to include the whole industry. I went to a veal butcher in the Bronx, I went on fishing boats in South Carolina, I went to farms in various places. I wanted people to understand that restaurants aren't just what goes on in the kitchen."

While he was passionate about food and writing, a major reason for changing careers was to spend more time with his family.

"One of the reasons I got out of law and into this was for the lifestyle," he said. "And so it would be totally self defeating if I couldn't be with my family while I promoted the book. So that's what I told the people at HarperCollins when I got [the opportunity] to promote the book. I'm happy to go anywhere. But I'm going to drive, and I'm going to bring my wife, my dog, and my baby. So far it's been great."

published November 07, 2005

( 21 votes, average: 4.1 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.