I don't think you'll see he billable hour model go away. I've worked on internal investigations that were like onions. Client did something wrong and the deeper you go the more you find problems with their process, etc. That's going to stay billed by the hour because there is no predictable way to value the service. However, I think there will be a lot of movement towards more predictable billing of say transactional matters. Some high end firms now structure fees as a percentage of deal value. Right now they use it to get a premium for big deals, but the percentages could be adjusted to bring the average fee in line with what similar transactions cost under billable hour models.
What new fee models won't change of course is the average cost. That's just a mater of supply and demand. If a service like this one say highlights bills for summer associates, and firms stop charging for them, then they'll just raise rates elsewhere. If you were willing to pay $X today for the overall service, you can only change X by increasing supply (say considering a wider range of firms instead of just big well known ones), or decreasing demand. Playing with the itemization won't do it.
What new fee models won't change of course is the average cost. That's just a mater of supply and demand. If a service like this one say highlights bills for summer associates, and firms stop charging for them, then they'll just raise rates elsewhere. If you were willing to pay $X today for the overall service, you can only change X by increasing supply (say considering a wider range of firms instead of just big well known ones), or decreasing demand. Playing with the itemization won't do it.