Even though she grew up on the Santa Barbara County ranch that was in her family for five generations, Stacy Gamble Shaw always knew she was a city girl.

So life in L.A. is a good fit for the new general counsel of the Los Angeles-based Kor Group, where she oversees outside counsel and legal affairs for the real estate development and management company or at least it’s sufficiently different from ranch life, where the closest community had a population of about 3,000.

Shaw left Santa Barbara County after high school to study psychology at UCLA. She started a master’s degree at Oxford University, but dropped out when she discovered academia wasn’t for her.

“It was stifling,” she said. “People were self-interested and only involved in what they studied, which is not applicable to the larger world.”

After returning to the United States, Shaw got a law degree from Stanford University and sealed her interest in transactional law at a summer job as a clerk at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. She said the competition and aggressiveness but without any direct confrontation best suited her personality. She joined Kor Group following a three-year stint at Sheppard Mullin and five years at Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker. She has also served as outside legal counsel for the company for more than seven years.

As general counsel for Kor, one of the projects she worked on was the restoration and leasing of the Pegasus Building, a downtown facade that was transformed from a state of decay into a stylish apartment complex.

“I think this is what a lot of lawyers want to end up doing the business side of practicing law,” she said.

Shaw recently bought and restored a 1927 Spanish-style home in Pasadena with her husband Kenneth Shaw, who works as a chief financial officer for a software company.

Even though she’s a city girl, the ranch still has a place in her heart and she goes there whenever she can.

“It’s great to be with them and be part of the family business too,” she said. “The day after Christmas they all had meetings about the ranch business with me, and that felt good.”