There are plenty of serious foodies in Big Law, stoking their passion with client lunches, business travel to food meccas and takeout from top restaurants during late nights at the office. Sometimes such chowhounds go pro—as we were reminded with the passing of eGullet founder Steven Shaw, who died April 8, reportedly from a heart attack. A former Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate, Shaw was one of a long line of lawyers who turned eating well at their clients’ expense into a new career.
Shaw got a first taste of his true calling in 1994, when, as a first-year associate, he spent months in Wilmington for a trial. He took charge of making sure the Cravath team on the case was well fed, scouting out the best of Wilmington’s restaurant scene. Afterward he wrote a short Wilmington restaurant survival guide, “which became a bit of a cult classic around the New York law firm scene,” as he later wrote in his book “Turning the Tables: Restaurants from the Inside Out.”
