Higher quality
research faster
Latham & Watkins is a leading global law firm that brings together exceptional legal talent in financial centers around the world to advise on complex transactions, litigation, and regulatory matters. The firm’s Tactical Opportunities (TacOpps) team occupies a distinctive role within the firm — an in-house market research capability that supports Latham lawyers by providing commercial insight and market intelligence on diverse topics and emerging industry trends. A uniquely skilled team in Big Law, the group comprises former investment banking analysts, investment professionals, and consultants, showcasing Latham’s commitment to innovative practice, commerciality, and exceptional client service.
Latham’s TacOpps team is an in-house market research group made up of professionals with backgrounds in finance, consulting, and investment banking. In a fast-changing market, the team identifies investment trends and offers strategic insights into how market events may impact different industries. Their north star? Delivering to lawyers actionable intelligence that enhances advice to clients.
The TacOpps team often needs to quickly gain a deep understanding of public information from multiple sources: news, earnings reports, equity research, filings, and broker analysis, among others. The firm rolled Perplexity out to the TacOpps team in November 2025 to help accelerate early-stage research, which team members could then validate.
There were a couple of reasons Latham chose to add Perplexity to its AI toolkit. The tool fits naturally into the TacOpps team’s workflows that demand speed, accuracy, and the ability to study up on rapidly changing topics. The fact that Perplexity’s citations makes answers easy to fact-check is also key for a team whose credibility depends on precision.
How Perplexity gives Latham’s TacOpps team an edge
The TacOpps team’s use of Perplexity reflects the nature of their work: providing insight and opportunity spotting based on market research and analysis that adds commercial value and deepens relationships with clients. When preparing for briefings or analysis on topics such as the German electricity distribution market, or another specialized industry, the team uses Perplexity to gather foundational information and establish credibility quickly. “When we need to school up, the raw material is there and it’s much faster to access,” says Astrid Lecomte du Noüy, a Director in the TacOpps team.
Perplexity’s clear sourcing makes verification easier, allowing the team to dive more quickly into the underlying relevant documents when needed. “Perplexity serves as a thought partner because the work we do is not very process-driven,” says Astrid. “So this is where it adds the most value.”
The team says the value is less about time savings and more about the quality and availability of information. In many cases, the relevant information simply would not have been found using other methods. “We can produce a better product in the same amount of time,” says Astrid. Over time, the team has also begun refining and reusing prompts, particularly for recurring “single-name” research. So the tool ends up supporting a more consistent starting point for analysis without replacing professional judgment.
Use case: Research a niche market
Example query: Prepare a concise briefing on the current German electricity market. Focus on: (1) recent and projected market growth in demand, generation, capacity, and pricing; (2) key structural and technology trends (e.g., renewables build‑out, imports/exports, flexibility, storage, PPAs); (3) major legal and regulatory developments affecting generation, grid access, tariffs, market design, and foreign investment over the past 12–24 months; and (4) specific watchpoints and risks for new entrants and investors (e.g., grid constraints, permitting, pricing volatility, regulatory uncertainty. Where possible, quantify impacts and distinguish between short‑term disruptions and long‑term structural shifts.
Looking ahead: AI tools across the firm
Some attorneys in the firm’s Emerging Companies & Growth Practice have started to explore Perplexity as an additional tool in the firm’s AI toolbox. One lawyer uses Perplexity Tasks to track emerging trends like companies incorporating outside of Delaware, such as in Texas and Nevada. “I find Perplexity to be super useful not just because of its speed but also because I’m able to cross-reference the resources that it’s pulling from,” says Christopher Pham, an associate in the firm’s Silicon Valley office, who represents emerging companies and venture capital firms in growth industries.
Adam Ziegler, Latham’s Director of Artificial Intelligence – Legal Innovation, says the firm stays at the forefront of the legal industry by investing in best-in-class AI and technology products. The goal, he says, is to maintain a competitive edge in meeting client needs.
Use case: Set a recurring task
Example query: Each month, identify all technology companies that were newly incorporated (i.e., legally formed) in California during the prior calendar month using state business registries, press releases, and startup or funding databases. Aggregate the results into a markdown table with two columns: Business name and Business type (e.g., AI SaaS, fintech, biotech). Exclude entities that only raised funding, changed domicile, or amended filings without being newly incorporated. Schedule this research and report generation to run automatically once per month, on the 5th, covering incorporations from the 1st through the last day of the previous month, and deliver the table plus a brief 3–5 sentence narrative summary.
Tips for improving market and industry research workflows
Tip 1 - Start broad, then validate at the source. Begin with Perplexity to quickly map the landscape (key players, business model basics, relevant terminology, current themes, and where the information is coming from), then open and validate the underlying sources.
Tip 2 - Build repeatable “sector school-up” prompts. Create a small prompt library for the recurring work, e.g., “new sector school-up,” “market structure overview,” “top players and recent deals,” and “what to watch / risks and catalysts”, and refine them over time as you learn what outputs are most reliable and useful.
Tip 3 - Use AI to support briefing-ready synthesis. Use Perplexity as a thought partner to assemble a concise, cited first cut, then apply professional judgment to correct, contextualize, and translate the findings into a briefing.
