The gunnercooke difference in the GenAI era: pricing that follows the client

When making the move away from legal practice into the world of legal innovation, I have to say, it wasn’t ever on my radar that I’d be sat in a pop-up pub with Legora to discuss the ins and outs of GenAI and the impact it’s having on law firm business models. But anything seems possible in 2026!

The question I was presented with is, “do you think the billable hour is dead?”. My immediate response was no, it’s much more nuanced than that, and it’s been one that we have been thinking about a lot internally over the past few months.  

There are some clear reasons for the tensions with traditional means of charging. GenAI compresses delivery time and we can get to outputs faster; client sentiments are shifting, and there’s an increasing expectation that these efficiency benefits flow through to matters; new AI-native market entrants are competing directly for the work that GenAI is best suited for, and so on. Recent survey responses also paint this picture – the Everlaw and ACC 2025 survey [LR1] found that 61% of in-house respondents said they are likely to push for a change in how legal services are priced in the future.   

So, it would be easy to look at GenAI efficiency gains and conclude that the billable hour has been flipped on its head entirely. The work can be done faster, that impacts the number of hours that can be billed, so the model dies. But that’s a potentially oversimplistic way of looking at it because it assumes what goes into legal service delivery is just about the output.

Legal service delivery is layered. Getting to the output (e.g. the carefully negotiated and curated transaction document) is obviously a core part of it, but so is understanding what the client values and their objectives. Overlay that with years of legal expertise and judgement and the ability to navigate complex relationships, decipher tricky regulatory landscapes, manage risk, apply strategic and creative thinking, and it becomes much more multi-faceted.

This exact point came up in our recent internal Pricing x GenAI workshops where we spoke to over 40 Partners across the firm. Task-level efficiency gains from the increased use of GenAI was felt across the board, but the consensus was that legal services are more than just the sum of their tasks. Throw in the move by GenAI providers towards consumption-based pricing models and the idea of “tokenomics”, and the costs associated with AI usage becomes less predictable. This challenges the assumption that getting to the output faster equates to cheaper services.

What we must therefore navigate is marrying up those task-level efficiency gains with token costs so that the use of GenAI translates into matter-level value and outcomes for clients. That makes it less about the time taken (or tokens used) to do something and more about getting under the hood of what clients are actually paying for, with pricing reflecting that rather than the hours behind it. I think this has always been a tension, but GenAI has certainly forced the conversation more readily.

At gunnercooke, our fee-share model leans into these challenges positively. Our Partners aren’t constrained by traditional structures and have the autonomy to explore innovative pricing models for their clients. There’s still a role for the billable hour, where uncertainty is high and the work is complex – in those moments, strategic overlay and direction are what can help clients get to the right results. We know that doesn’t have to be the only way though, and we are responding by being client-centric and value-driven by encouraging upfront and collaborative client conversations, and incorporating fixed fee, tiered structures, value-based pricing proposals into how we work.

So, going back to the original question, no, I don’t think the billable hour is dead, but it can’t be the default going forwards. For clients, the advantage of our model is that our Partners have the flexibility to build fair pricing approaches that are grounded in needs, value and performance.

This is a conversation we’re having with clients and Partners alike. If it resonates, you can get in touch here.