The Narrative Rendez-Vous : The future of outside counsel relationships in the age of AI
AI is changing how legal work is delivered, resourced — and ultimately valued.
But some of the hardest questions it creates are still being discussed separately.
Legal departments are asking: If AI makes legal work faster, what should we be paying for? How much transparency should we expect? What work should still sit with our law firms?
Law firms are asking: How do we price when time is no longer the obvious proxy for value? How much of our AI use do clients actually want to see? And how do we innovate when clients still procure legal services in traditional ways?
On 3 November, we’re bringing both sides of that conversation into the same room.
The Narrative Rendez-Vous is a private executive gathering for 50 carefully selected senior legal decision-makers : split evenly between in-house legal leaders and law firm leadership.
No vendor expo. No endless presentations.
Just a deliberately curated room and a candid conversation about what the outside counsel relationship needs to look like next.
What we'll get into
Pricing in the age of AI
If AI materially changes the time required to deliver legal work, what happens to pricing — and what should clients expect?
What are clients actually buying?
Hours? Outcomes? Expertise? Risk transfer? And how should firms demonstrate value when the answer is increasingly a combination of all four?The resourcing shift
Which work stays with law firms, which moves in-house, which shifts to alternative providers — and which gets enabled by technology?The transparency gap
What do clients genuinely expect to know about how AI is being used on their matters — and what are firms prepared to disclose?Breaking the blame cycle
Clients ask for innovation but continue to instruct and procure in traditional ways. Firms talk about transformation while protecting legacy economics.What needs to change on both sides?
What's already working?
We'll look at what leading legal departments and law firms are already experimenting with — and what the rest of the market can learn from them.
Who is this for?
This is deliberately not a broad legal industry event.
We're curating an even split between the people who buy and shape external legal services and the people responsible for delivering and transforming them.
On the in-house side: General Counsels, Deputy GCs, Heads of Legal, Legal Operations leaders and other senior legal decision-makers from large organisations with meaningful external counsel spend and influence over panel, procurement and resourcing decisions.
On the law firm side: Managing Partners, Practice Leaders, Innovation & Transformation Leaders and other senior decision-makers with the authority to influence client relationships, service delivery and commercial models.
One room. Both sides of the relationship.
We're not trying to manufacture consensus.
In fact, we'd rather not.
The point is to create a room where both sides can compare expectations, challenge assumptions and talk candidly about the tensions that normally stay behind closed doors.
Because the future of the outside counsel relationship shouldn't be designed by law firms or legal departments in isolation.
It needs both sides at the table.
About the hosts
GC Rendez-Vous is an invitation-led executive engagement platform bringing together General Counsels and senior in-house legal leaders across Europe through carefully curated rooms, relevant conversations and meaningful connections.
Narrative is the AI-native pricing and matter intelligence platform helping law firms understand, quantify and communicate how AI is changing the economics and delivery of legal work.
Request your place
Attendance is limited to 50 participants, with places curated to maintain an even split between senior in-house legal leaders and law firm decision-makers.
Register your interest to join us in London on 3 November.