Neither draft position is free: an early pick buys denial (taking what the enemy wanted, locking a role) at the cost of information, while a late pick buys information at the cost of exposing your comp and having the fewest good options left. Last pick sees the most, but that's only an advantage if a good option in the one open role is still there to take.
Blind pick versus counter pick
Every pick in draft is either blind — locked in before you know what it's up against — or informed by at least some of what the enemy has picked. Blind picks carry a real risk: you can walk straight into a bad matchup with no way to see it coming. Later picks trade that risk for information, at the cost of also revealing more of your own team's plan to the enemy before they finish theirs. Neither position is free.
This is true position by position, too, not just pick by pick. First pick overall in one game might functionally be a late pick for a specific role, if the rest of that role's realistic options are already gone by the time it's actually assigned — pick order and role order aren't strictly the same thing once assignments settle.
What pick order actually costs and gains
Picking early costs information — you're committing before you know what you're playing into or with. What it buys is denial: an early pick can take a champion the enemy wanted, or lock in a role before it gets contested by your own team. Picking late costs exposure — the enemy has seen more of your comp by the time you lock in — but buys a reactive pick: you can answer a lane matchup or plug a gap in your comp that only became visible once the picks ahead of you were made. Whether early or late is better for a specific pick depends on what that pick actually needs: denial value, if it's contesting something contestable, or reactive value, if it's better spent responding to what's already on the board.
The flex pick
A flex pick is a champion that can reasonably play more than one role or lane matchup, picked specifically so the enemy can't tell which one it's headed for until it's already locked to a lane. It's a way to get some of the benefit of a late, informed pick while still picking early — the enemy sees the champion, not the plan, and can't draft cleanly around either possibility until it's too late to matter. Not every champion supports this, but when one does, it's one of the more efficient ways to spend an early pick.
The trade-off is that a flex pick is often a slightly weaker choice for either individual role than a dedicated pick would be — you're paying for the ambiguity with some raw power, which is why not every flex-capable champion is worth flexing in every game.
Why last pick isn't automatically the advantage it looks like
Last pick sees the most information, which sounds like the best seat in the draft, but it's also the pick with the least room left to manoeuvre — every role but one is usually already decided by the time it happens, and the pool of champions that both fill that role and answer whatever the enemy did last is often small. A last pick forced into a specific role with a specific job to do can be more constrained than an earlier pick with the whole draft still open. Information is only an advantage if there's still a good option left to use it on.
Lane swaps and pre-arranged picks
Coordinated teams sometimes pick with an agreed lane swap already planned — a jungler and support might draft in the other's usual pick order, then swap assigned lanes once selection finishes, so the enemy sees the picks in a misleading order relative to who actually plays them. Solo queue teams can't coordinate this reliably with strangers, but it's worth knowing the trick exists: pick order alone doesn't always tell you who's about to play what, and a comp that looks odd for its apparent lane assignments might make more sense once the actual lanes are set.
What the enemy's pick order tells you
The same reasoning about denial and reactive value applies to reading the enemy's picks, not just making your own. An enemy first pick is usually either their strongest or safest option, picked before they know anything about your comp — it's worth noting as a standalone strength rather than a reaction to anything. An enemy's last pick, by contrast, is a direct response to the rest of the draft, including yours, and is worth reading as "what did they think this comp still needed" rather than in isolation. None of this is about gaming the system — it's about not reading more into pick order than it actually contains. A pick's timing is context, not proof of intent or skill.
None of this replaces reading the actual comp once it's done — see reading a losing draft for that — or checking how a finished lobby gets scored once every pick is locked in.