The Net Book agreement (NBA) died at the end of September, after a long illness, which began as a legal challenge by the Pentos Group in February 1989.

Pentos asked the Office of Fair Trading to refer the agreement to the Restrictive Practices Court.

Since then, the NBA has been attacked by the European Commission, and ruled as an illegal practice across EU frontiers, inhibiting free movement of goods.This ruling was upheld by the European Court of First Instance in July 1992.

Its decision was overturned by the European Court of Justice in January this year, but the commercial power of publishers and retailers prevailed over the judicial opinion of the ECJ.

By May, John le Carre's Our Game was selling at half-price at Asda.

WH Smiths was ready for a price war, as was Hodder Headline, and by 1 October 1995 they had been joined by Random House and HarperCollins.

The NBA was dead.

So how will this affect legal publishers?The main publishers to the solicitor market all supply directly to the profession.

The Law Society sells over 95% of its books by mail, so we do not expect to see the latest edition of the Conveyancing Handbook piled high and advertised at 25% off in the windows of WH Smiths or John Menzies.

Likewise, FT Law and Tax trades directly with the profession and is not expecting the market to change.Marie Staunton, publishing director at FTL&T, confirmed that 'the consequences of the demise of the NBA have been discussed at FTL&T.

As 90% of sales are through direct mail, and discounting post-NBA is done by booksellers, this is not going to have an effect on our publishing activities.

The issue was discussed three years ago in the Longman Group (as was), and abolition was regarded as a far more serious threat to Longmans education and ELT titles.' Furthermore, FT does not expect legal booksellers to discount, an expectation that would appear to be vindicated by Wildy's response to the collapse of the NBA.Colin Wickham, bookshop manager at Wildy & Sons, Lincoln's Inn, was certain that it would not be entering into price wars.

'We are not going to be affected by what is happening,' he said.

'I can't see us discounting on new titles because we already offer discounts by selling current edition second-hand student texts at a discount on the new price.

For new books, its only going to be books appropriate to supermarkets, like Jeffrey Archer novels, which will be discounted.'The commercial pressures inhibiting discounts on law books were expressed forcefully by Bridget Sandford-Smith, bookshop manager at LAMBS, Store Street, who complained that the margins on book prices of student and professional texts are not big enough for them to offer discounts.

'For university level and practitioner texts we receive a discount of between 20% to 32.5%, which is just enough to pay the rent and salaries, and for some practitioner texts like Archbolds we only get a 10% discount [cost £198].

Added to that, lawyers are notorious late payers of their bills, which cuts the margin even further.

There is no profit on Archbolds if it takes three reminder letters to get the customer to pay.' Ms Sandford-Smith went on to say that they already made a loss on some publications, which they only agreed to supply to keep up the volume of trade with a publisher, to guard against further cuts in their trade discount.

Offering discounts to customers would be a guaranteed way of putting themselves out of business.Not all booksellers are taking the same line.

Alina Lourie, marketing director at Sweet & Maxwell, receives reports from her field sales staff of local discount arrangements on selected titles.

There are also stories of bookseller reps offering an across-the-board discount of 20% to law firms which agree to place all their business with the bookseller.

Though she claims that Sweet & Maxwell does not regard this as a threat to its business, it has sent a letter to all booksellers reminding them that all Sweet & Maxwell books carry a recommended retail price.

It expects customers to follow these price recommendations, or the trade terms of booksellers offering its books at another (discounted) rate would be reviewed.

Ms Lourie confirmed that this meant that discounting booksellers would be penalised.Some law firms and booksellers may have been breaking the NBA for years, when buying through their library.

Under the terms of the agreement, libraries are able to get a discount (usually 10%) with a certificate from the Publishers Association, so long as they meet certain conditions, eg public access.

However, law firm libraries may have been requesting and receiving a library discount, although they are clearly not eligible under the Publishers Association terms.

This ability to get concessionary rates on netted books seems to have been politely ignored.Student text publishers and campus book-shops are likely to feel most threatened.

Discounting on campuses, and the possibility of bulk deals with teaching institutions undermining booksellers' profit margins, is already being threatened.

The College and University Booksellers Group met earlier this month, when campus booksellers re ported that they are under pressure from students' unions to offer discounts to students.

Otherwise the unions would go direct to publishers for trade discounts.

Sweet & Maxwell's response to this was curiously at odds with their stance on practitioner texts: 'If student unions want to deal directly with us, and pass on the discount, we will sell the books to them.' Law students, at least, might profit from the demise of the NBA.