Lord David Neuberger has been appointed as the new Master of the Rolls, succeeding Lord Anthony Clarke.

Neuberger will become the ninety-fifth Master of the Rolls on 1 October this year when Clarke joins the Supreme Court after a four-year term.

Neuberger's rise to the second-highest judicial post in the country – after the Lord Chief Justice – has been one of the fastest ever, having become the country's youngest law lords in 2006 at the age of 58 after only two years at the Court of Appeal.

He was called to the Bar in 1974, taking silk in 1987. He became a High Court judge assigned to the Chancery division in 1996 and was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 2004. Neuberger was knighted in 1996 and made a life peer in 2007.

In 2007 he published a report on access to the Bar calling for law to be taught as part of the national curriculum as well asking for external funding to be made available for pupillages.

The post of Master of the Rolls was initially a that of a clerk who looked after the records of the Chancery which were written on parchment, and the first recorded Master dates back to 1295.