Commercial tapered leaders usually have a section of level tippet at the end, this lets you change flies a few times and still have the same size at the tip. Once you have used this up you can add new tippet sections.
For example, I start out the day with a fresh 9' 5x leader that has an 18" long tip of level 5x material. My first fly of the day gets tied on and I use about 4" of material tying the knot. After 5 or 6 fly changes the 5x level tip is down to about 4". So I tie in a fresh piece of 5x about 18" long and start the proccess over. During a days fishing the level tip may vary from 6" to 18" in length, but this is not enough difference to have a big impact on how the leader performs. In contrast, adding 18" the a fresh leader would mean a level tip length of 32" and that might be enough to effect the turn over.
If I change flies a lot or if I start to break off bigger sections of leader I might need to rebuild more than just the tip. Say I snag a tree and break off 30" of material. I can rebuild the leader to it's original 9' 5x formula by adding 6" of 3x, 6" of 4x then 18" of 5x. Note: since I need about 4" extra at the tag end to tie a knot I use 14" of material to end up with a 6" section (4" tag - 6" finished section - 4" tag.)
You might argue that I start the day fishing with a knotless tapered leader and end the day with a hand tied one!
For me the biggest benifit of experimenting with hand tied leaders is that I learned how leader design effects casting. As others have suggested you might want to have an extra long tip section. The well respected 'Harvey Leader Formula' is designed to have too much tip length so the end of the leader collapses into loose coils just before the fly. This extra slack is intended to improve your drag free drift. Rather than carry a dozen or so leaders in my vest I can re-tie stuff on the stream to match fishing conditions. If I want to use a Harvey style leader I know how to do it since I have built them in the past. If I want swap from a 5X to a 3X I can cut into a leader and re-build that one too.
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