Observing the political construction of new transnational judicial institutions sheds light on a “dramaturgical” use of the notion of legal culture. This essay explores this use in the negotiation, by a collegial oligarchy of harmonizing judges and corporate lawyers assembled in a “conclave,” of a new intellectual property regime in Europe based on the design of the new transnational Unified Patent Court. The analysis of controversies between these judicial entrepreneurs, of their social networks selecting ex ante leaders, and of the ways in which they represent their compromises and sacrifices in their negotiations, shows that economic stakes, more than legal cultures in a patrimonial sense, shape this dramaturgical use characterizing transnational institutionalization processes.