So farewell, then, law lords. The appellate committee of the House of Lords is sitting today for the last time in 133 years, hearing a short immigration appeal and then delivering seven judgments. On 1 October, the law lords will be transformed into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Except I don’t think ‘law lords’ will disappear at all. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 certainly says that ‘the judges other than the president and deputy president are to be styled "Justices of the Supreme Court".’ But nobody is going to start talking about ‘Justice of the Supreme Court Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood agreeing with Justice of the Supreme Court Lord Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony’. It takes too long.

Cutting the titles down doesn’t help. ‘Justice Brown’ and ‘Justice Clarke’ sound American — and inferior in status to the High Court judges that they ceased to be long ago. ‘President Phillips’ and ‘Deputy Hope’ would be absurd. I predict that we shall continue to refer to them as Lord Brown and Lord Clarke, Lord Phillips and Lord Hope.

What, though, of the judges appointed after 1 October? They will not receive peerages. The obvious thing to do is to give them the judicial title of ‘Lord’ or ‘Lady’ — like judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. That way, all members of the Supreme Court will sound the same. But the Queen’s consent is required before people can start calling themselves ‘Lord’ and, when I enquired a week ago, it had not yet been granted.

There is no great hurry. Although Lord Neuberger’s appointment last week as Master of the Rolls leaves a vacancy in the Supreme Court, the appointment procedures involve so many consultations that his successor will not be named until well into the autumn. The court will therefore start work with no more than 11 permanent judges instead of the intended 12.

Farewell hearingsMeanwhile, the law lords have been holding their farewell hearings this week. Short cases have been slotted in so that everyone qualified to do so can hear an appeal and appear in the composite oil-painting. Lord Saville sat on Monday, returning to judging this month after taking a decade off to chair the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. Lord Clarke, the current Master of the Rolls, sat in the Lords for the first and last time as a peer holding ‘high judicial office’.

Since the law lords normally take several weeks to write their judgments, transitional arrangements will allow the Supreme Court to rule on cases heard by the House of Lords. There was consternation when it was realised that Lord Scott, who is sitting today, will have reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 before the Supreme Court can deliver its ruling. Fortunately, his birthday is on 2 October, allowing him to be sworn in on 1 October, retire the next day and come back later to give judgment.

Appropriately, the law lords have chosen to end their final sitting today with a series of judgments. And the last judgment of all will be on the case brought by Debbie Purdy, the multiple sclerosis sufferer who has challenged the DPP’s policy of not announcing a case-specific policy on assisted suicide.

But lawyers will be much more interested in the first ruling this afternoon, a negligence claim worth £88m brought by company liquidators against the chartered accountants Moore Stephens. As auditors, they are accused of failing to detect – and therefore prevent – fraud committed by a trader who ran the company as a one-man band. But the Court of Appeal decided that liquidators, who must sue in the name of the company, could not claim for losses incurred through what amounted to the company’s own fraud. Moore Stephens denies negligence.

The appeal was funded by a company called IM Litigation Funding, which backs claims in return for up to 50% of the net proceeds. Since it operates on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis, the company has a lot of money riding on the outcome of the case.

So, too, do the appellants’ solicitors, Norton Rose. The funder pays a claimant’s solicitors no more than 60-70% of their hourly rates — although this rises to 140% if the claim is successful.

Title confusionThe creation of a Supreme Court may have caused some confusion to Gazette readers, many of whom already have certificates admitting them to be solicitors of the Supreme Court. That, however, must be the Supreme Court of England and Wales, which consists of the Court of Appeal, the High Court and the Crown Court.

From October, these will be known collectively as the ‘Senior Courts’ of England and Wales. And, under paragraph 21(6) of schedule 11 to the Constitutional Reform Act, the term ‘solicitor’, formerly defined by section 87 of the Solicitors Act 1974 as meaning ‘solicitor of the Supreme Court’, will now mean ‘solicitor of the Senior Courts’.

Not quite such an attractive title. But although solicitors of the Supreme Court will be no more, there is one solicitor – strictly speaking, a former solicitor – in the Supreme Court. Step forward Lord Collins of Mapesbury, the 111th and penultimate Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.

All of them are listed in a superb tribute to be published next month by OUP. The Judicial House of Lords 1876-2009, edited by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, Brice Dickson and Gavin Drewry, runs to more than 800 pages and tells you just about everything you could possibly want to know about the law lords – except the inside account of Tony Blair’s attempt, in 2003, to abolish them. That, as they say, is another story.