‘Tesco law’ will put an end to hourly billing and lead to ‘fixed price deals’ for litigation, the master of the rolls Lord Neuberger predicted last week.

Speaking at the Personal Injuries Bar Association conference, Neuberger said that the Legal Services Act 2007 would do much to lower litigation costs.

He said the ‘new legal landscape’, which would include alternative business structures, legal disciplinary partnerships, barristers-only partnerships and ‘barrister-led entities competing with solicitors’, as well as ‘so-called Tesco law’, would make the legal services market ‘ever-more competitive’.

Neuberger said: ‘Ever-increasing competition will lead to novel business practices. It may result in an end to hourly billing; or if not its end then its marked decline.

‘The end of the billable hour would be likely to have a salutary effect, it seems to me, on the base costs of litigation. Greater competition between firms will no doubt lead to fixed price deals – deals which will be for proportionate amounts. They will have to be or the work will go to competitors.’

Neuberger added that Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations on costs reform had his ‘enthusiastic support’.

The judiciary has set up a judicial steering group to assist in implementing the review.