The BTI Fearsome Foursome 2027

Latham is buying its own Nvidia GPUs, standing up private infrastructure, and fine-tuning open AI models – while keeping every major AI vendor on speed dial.

They don’t have to know whether OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Nvidia, or someone we haven’t heard of yet wins. It can use the winner, build around them, or walk away.

This isn’t an AI purchase. It’s a leverage play. And at Latham’s size, leverage gets very profitable very quickly.

1. Optionality Is the Real Weapon

This shrewdness isn’t better AI. It’s never getting trapped by one vendor’s limitations, security requirements, prices, or roadmap. If a new model crushes today’s leader? Latham can move. When an open model becomes good enough? Latham can run more of it privately.

Maybe more importantly – when a client doesn’t want its most sensitive information touching an outside model? Latham has another place to put the work. The firm doesn’t need to build everything itself. It only needs enough capability to offer the right tool and approach.

Latham’s scale makes this bet possible in a way most firms simply can’t match. Expensive infrastructure and engineering talent can be spread across thousands of lawyers, enormous clients, and mountains of premium work. While the amounts invested are undisclosed, sources estimate the investment to be at least $45 to $55 million annually – rivalling Kirkland as a percent of revenue.

Most firms will become increasingly dependent on AI vendors. Latham is spending money to make AI vendors compete for Latham. This is strategic leverage.

2. Confidentiality Becomes the Pitch

Latham may have found a way to turn one of AI’s biggest client anxieties into a reason to hire Latham.

The most valuable matters often contain the biggest secrets: the undisclosed deal, board investigation, activist attack, CEO crisis, government investigation, or bet-the-company litigation. These are precisely the matters where clients can be most nervous about AI touching their information.

Major AI providers already offer serious enterprise security. Running the model itself gives Latham more control. Latham can bring AI firepower to clients’ most sensitive problems while running selected workloads inside infrastructure they control. It isn’t an IT feature – it’s business development.

The more sensitive the matter, the more valuable control becomes. The more valuable control becomes, the more Latham differentiates itself on exactly the work every elite law firm wants most.

3. The Margin Play Everyone’s Sleeping On

This may be the biggest economic prize. Clients don’t pay Latham millions because a matter requires 7,000 lawyer hours. They pay because the acquisition is worth $15 billion, the investigation threatens the company, or the litigation can change its future.

AI can attack the cost of producing the answer without attacking the value of the answer. Imagine Latham delivering a $2 million matter with 25% less lawyer time while producing an equal or better outcome. And faster.

The matter doesn’t suddenly become 25% less valuable to the client. Clients are happier – they got their outcome faster – preserving the fee. The difference becomes an enormous economic opportunity: produce at AI economics while pricing at elite-law-firm value.

Clients will eventually demand their share of the productivity dividend. They always do. But Latham doesn’t need to capture all of it. Capturing even a sliver becomes enormous money.

What Has to Go Right

None of this works just because Latham bought Nvidia servers. The models have to perform, the infrastructure has to deliver, and Latham has to keep elite technical talent while competing with technology companies for the same people. Latham has a history of taking on more risk and knowing what to do to make it happen.

The Bottom Line

Everyone is watching the horses: which model wins, who has the smartest AI, and who signs with whom. Latham is playing a different game – building enough infrastructure and expertise to use whichever horse wins, keep its most sensitive workloads private when it chooses, negotiate with vendors from strength, and capture more of the enormous economic upside AI offers.

And this is what AI is ultimately about.

Wile E. Coyote rarely gets top billing over Bugs Bunny.

But Wile E. finally has his day in the sun – starring in his own live-action movie. After decades of falling off cliffs, blowing himself up, and ordering catastrophically unreliable products from ACME, Wile E. finally gets his shot. But Bugs is still miles ahead.

Coyote vs. Acme may offer a few lessons about litigation and personal injury. But Wile E. and Bugs offer even better lessons in business development.

One is arguably the worst business developer in cartoon history. The other is a master. And the difference has almost nothing to do with talent.

Look at how they operate:

• Wile E. pursues. Bugs attracts.
• Wile E. has a plan. Bugs reads the room.
• Wile E. keeps working it. Bugs keeps listening.
• Wile E. is obsessed with his objective. Bugs is obsessed with what’s happening right now.
• Wile E. buys more tools. Bugs needs almost none.
• Wile E. never changes strategy. Bugs adapts instantly.
• Wile E. knows everything about his target. Bugs knows everything about his target’s world.

And perhaps the biggest difference:

• Wile E. prepares for what he wants to happen. Bugs prepares for whatever happens.

Here’s the part law firms should find unnerving:

Wile E. works much harder at business development. He prepares. He invests. He plans. He buys every tool available. He relentlessly pursues his target. And nobody could ever question his persistence.

Wile E. would crush his law firm’s BD activity goals. And he would still lose the client.

Bugs does something entirely different. He prepares to adapt. He watches. He listens. He sizes up the situation. And he knows the terrain.

He understands the environment, the players, the risks, and what is likely to happen next.

That’s his version of industry knowledge.

It allows Bugs to hear what others miss, anticipate the next move, and change direction without missing a beat.

Wile E. knows his target. Bugs understands his target and his target’s world and adapts to it.

This is a massive difference in business development.

The best business developers don’t just know the client. They understand the forces bearing down on the client – competitors, customers, economics, regulation, technology, internal pressures, and what could happen next.

They don’t prepare for a conversation. They prepare for wherever the conversation goes. And this is Bugs’s plan.

Wile E. Coyote is the perfect caricature of how too many lawyers develop business – relentless pursuit, elaborate plans, expensive tools, and nowhere near enough listening.

Bugs wins because he does the opposite.

Maybe the best business development advice has been staring us in the face since 1940:

What’s up, Doc?

Ask the question. Know the world behind the answer. Ask What’s Up, Doc? Then listen.

That’s all, folks.

Law firms are making more money than ever – and asking fewer clients what they think.

This is no accident.

Record profits make feedback feel unnecessary. They know their clients. Firms don’t want to bother clients. They don’t want to spend the money. And increasingly, they reserve their precious client asks for Chambers. Why ask what’s wrong when everything looks so right?

BTI just asked corporate counsel if their law firms had asked them for feedback. A mere 28% said yes, down from 38% just 3 years ago.

But this is only half the story.

60% of the BTI Client Service 30 conduct ongoing client feedback. Most do it at scale. And – the BTI Client Service 30 command 40% of all the profits.

These firms aren’t looking for compliments. They are after 5 much bigger prizes:

• First crack at the blockbuster work.
  They hear about the emerging risk, brewing dispute, transaction, regulatory threat, or CEO-level problem while it’s still taking shape – before competitors ever know there’s work to chase.
• Intelligence nobody else has.
  Every substantive client conversation produces proprietary information about changing needs, expectations, competitors, opportunities, and vulnerabilities. You can’t buy it. You can’t scrape it. And AI doesn’t have it.
• Getting better when they’re already great.
  These firms don’t mistake extraordinary financial performance for extraordinary client performance. They want to find the gaps before they become even the smallest issue.
• Seeing around the corner.
  Ongoing feedback gives these firms an early-warning system into where clients – and their legal spending – are heading next.
• Keeping super-premium work out of the spot market.
  This is the ultimate prize. When the precedent-defining, reputation-threatening, bet-the-company matter arrives, the firm is already inside the conversation. The client doesn’t need to shop the work among elite firms because its trusted firm is already there.

For these firms, feedback isn’t optional. It’s mandatory.

One managing partner of a BTI Client Service 30 firm with killer PEP put it this way:

“The partner who tells me we can’t get feedback from their client goes to the top of my list – unless it’s a supersensitive situation – then I’ll save them for later.”

Here is where client feedback turns into serious money.

The conventional BD model looks like this:

Opportunity appears → firms find out → firms compete → someone wins.

The elite relationship model is entirely different:

Client feedback → intelligence → early access → opportunity emerges → client conversation → immediately engage in problem definition and solution → start the work from the conversation → competition never happens.

This may be the most overlooked economic benefit of client feedback.

Law firm leaders grew up on one of the industry’s most sacred truths. So did more than 50% of partners. The fundamental truth coloring their world: Clients Hire Lawyers, Not Law Firms. This belief shaped almost everything we know about law firms, including:

• Origination credit
• Partner compensation
• Client ownership
• Lateral strategy
• And multimillion-dollar bidding wars for rainmakers

As lateral hiring moves into bubble territory – we wanted to test this belief – as so many truisms are falling by the wayside.

We asked more than 350 corporate counsel if they hire lawyers or law firms. Clients don’t believe it nearly as much as law firms do.  Let’s dissect their thinking:

The Lawyer Loyalists: 23.9% are all in on the lawyers – they hire the lawyer – the firm is largely backup.

Lawyer Leaning: 47.8% hire lawyers – but the firm can strengthen it, weaken it, or kill it.

Firm Influenced: 28.4% are buying the firm – they don’t see the individual lawyer as enough. The firm plays a substantial role in the decision.

Only 1 in 4 clients hire lawyers, not law firms. The others give the firms a vote. This changes the lateral math: A lateral’s book may include value created by the firm they’re leaving.

Two identical books can have radically different values. A $20 million partner whose clients hire the lawyer is fundamentally different from a $20 million partner whose clients are attached to both lawyer and firm.

The biggest unknown in lateral valuation may be hiding in plain sight. Firms know the partner’s revenue, rates, matters, clients and profitability. They may not know the one thing determining how much of the book actually moves:

Who does the client think they’re hiring?

BTI research reveals 21% of clients don’t know who their relationship partner is. Think about this in a market built around portable relationships. You can’t automatically take a relationship with you if the client doesn’t believe the relationship belongs to you.

Clients harbor the missing intelligence in lateral due diligence. Big Law spends millions determining how big the book is. The question worth more millions is how much of the book actually belongs to the lawyer. The firm finding out before writing the check has a distinct advantage.

Today’s biggest client service risk isn’t poor service. It’s delivering yesterday’s version of great service. The 256 BTI Client Service All-Stars don’t follow the client service curve. They stay ahead of it.

Corporate counsel face more complexity, relentless regulatory change, greater business pressure, and increasingly demanding CEOs – all without significantly larger legal departments. They rely on outside counsel more than ever – and expect more than ever.

Clients don’t remember who answered first. They remember who changed the outcome.

Responsiveness is now the minimum price of admission. Today’s clients single out lawyers who help them pivot faster, make better decisions, anticipate what’s next and achieve better business outcomes.

BTI’s latest research reveals five new behaviors clients now use to separate exceptional lawyers from everyone else:

It’s easy to be caught delivering yesterday’s client service. In the last year corporate counsel found the following key changes impacting their lives:

• CEOs more involved in legal decisions than ever
• Regulatory whiplash
• New and novel litigation claims
• More claims with potentially nuclear verdicts
• Must do M&A
• Geopolitical volatility
• Highly limited additions to in-house counsel staffing

The upshot: New expectations of outside counsel as in-house counsel rely on them more than ever.

But – 256 attorneys figured out how to front-run the ever-changing demands on their clients. They earned the coveted nomination for delivering the best of the best client service.

The Only Purely Organic Ranking

No submissions. No nominations. No suggestions. No payments. Only clients can nominate a BTI Client Service All-Star.  We asked them to pinpoint these individuals by name.

This exclusive research – this report, and the online directory – serve as the gold standard to uncover the best. Used by more than 19,000 corporate counsel and law firms alike – it remains the pinnacle of client service performance.

Clients single out 256 All-Stars from 129 firms. A few highlights:

Every private equity transaction reaches a point where financial models stop driving the conversation. The returns work. Growth assumptions survive scrutiny.

Now comes the real risk.

A law firm’s value walks out the door every evening. Its value lives in partner-client relationships. Lose either group and enterprise value begins eroding long before it appears in the financials.

Every law firm private equity deal ultimately comes down to two questions:

• Will the partners stay?
• Will the clients stay?

Everything else is manageable. These two risks aren’t. No amount of financial engineering replaces rainmakers who leave. No operational improvement offsets clients losing confidence. Once either group begins questioning the firm’s future, enterprise value starts slipping.

BTI’s newest research offers an early preview of what investors are likely to hear during due diligence.

Will Clients Stay?

The answer is a decisive concern.

More than one-third of corporate counsel (34.7%) say private equity would send them looking for another law firm immediately.

Another 38.1% wouldn’t leave on day one – but neither would they extend blind loyalty. They would scrutinize every move for signs partner attention has shifted inward.

Only 27.2% say private equity would have no impact on their decision to continue using a law firm.

Clients aren’t rejecting private equity. They’re preparing for uncertainty.

Corporate counsel expect distracted partners. Few want mission-critical legal matters caught in the middle of someone else’s transformation.

Will Partners Stay?

Nearly one-quarter (22.4%) would immediately begin exploring other firms. Slightly more (30.7%) believe private equity would make their firms stronger, more disciplined, and more competitive.

The largest group (46.9%) is waiting for proof. Those partners become the decisive vote.

The Real Due Diligence

Financial performance is a lagging indicator. Partners and clients determine future cash flow. Private equity invests in future cash flow.

Few investors commit capital until they’re confident partners and clients will stay.

Everything else is negotiation.

AI was supposed to kill the billable hour. Clients aren’t buying it.

We just asked more than 350 corporate counsel whether AI finally ends hourly billing. Their answer is decisive. 2.5 times more clients believe AI extends the billable hour’s life than ends it.

Only 28.1% believe AI finally accelerates a meaningful shift away from hourly billing. Nearly 72% see little reason to expect major change for the billable hour.

Why? Because AI solves the wrong problem.

The billable hour survives because clients trust it more than the alternatives. Not because they enjoy paying for time. Hourly billing feels familiar. It is easy to defend, easy to budget, and easy to explain across the organization.

Alternative fees don’t require better technology. They require extraordinary client trust.

Clients need complete confidence in their law firm to:

• Scope the work accurately
• Staff matters intelligently
• Communicate early
• Deliver the expected outcome

BTI research shows only one in four client relationships reaches this level of confidence.

Ironically, AI may strengthen the billable hour before it weakens it. Clients believe AI helps law firms:

• Budget with more accuracy
• Prepare budgets faster
• Spot overruns in near real time
• Keep them more informed about the case

Every one of these improvements makes hourly billing easier to live with. More importantly – these benefits give corporate counsel something they value even more than lower fees: predictability.

Clients see one more obstacle: in their minds, few law firms have mastered AI. If firms struggle using it today, clients have little reason to believe those same firms can build an entirely new pricing model around it.

Trust grows slowly while technology runs wild.

The biggest AI story in legal pricing may not involve replacing the billable hour. It may be keeping it alive far longer than anyone expected.

Every law firm believes the pitch ends when the conference room door closes. Clients know the real pitch starts after the lawyers leave.

While your team is busy replaying its performance, your client is answering one question:

What did I just learn?

Clients aren’t judging how much your lawyers know. They’re judging whether they know more because they met your lawyers.

Everything else flows from the answer. Not the résumé. Not the rates. This one question clients ask themselves 30 seconds after the pitch ends says everything.

Get it right, and the energy is electric. Clients are thinking:

“They’re the ones.”

Clients don’t replay great slides. They replay great insights.

That’s when one thought begins taking over.

“They get it.”

They saw the business issue. They connected risks nobody else saw. They were out in front – spotting the issues before we brought them up.

“They get me.”

They understood what was riding on this decision for me. They understood my stress. They understood what happens if I don’t get this right.

Legal skill gets firms in the room. Being understood gets firms the work.

Every winning pitch leaves clients saying three things:

• • “I learned something new.”
  • “I didn’t think they would know so much about us.”
  • “I learned more than I expected.”

Those reactions tell you the decision is tilting your way.

Now flip it.

“I learned nothing new.”

The team is polished, professional, and easily forgettable. The client heard their own problem, played back in better fonts. Nothing fresh or new.

This pitch doesn’t lose loud – it dies quiet. No one is excited. The conversation quietly shifts to another firm.

The Move for Firms Pitching This Year

The message: Stop pitching what you know. Start pitching what the client doesn’t know yet.

Competence is the cover charge – every firm in the room clears it. Insight is what wins. So is whether the room felt built around the client, or built around a template with their logo dropped in.

Walk into every pitch ready to change how clients see their own business. Every finalist explains the law. Winning firms change how clients think.

When clients leave seeing their business differently, they usually leave saying one thing.

“They’re the ones.”

Clients aren’t asking whether your lawyers are smart. They’re asking whether they are smarter because they met you.