When Elliot Katz started counseling the makers of internet-connected vehicles on privacy matters as an associate at DLA Piper in 2011, he heard he was making a wrong turn in Big Law.

“People told me I was throwing my career away,” Katz recalled. “I was dealing with stuff that was a science fiction movie, a hundred years away.”

But in 2017, Katz's practice is “like, the king of the cocktail party,” he said this week, one which saw him leave the global legal giant—where he co-chaired the connected and self-driving car practice at DLA Piper—to join McGuireWoods as a partner in San Francisco.