It is clear that the public is entitled to be protected from the results of negligence by solicitors, and generally the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF) does a good job.However, since professional indemnity insurance cover became mandatory in the mid-1970s, there have been many changes in the structure of the legal profession.

Indeed the differences in the work done by small high-street firms and that done by large international practices is so great that they are almost operating in different professions.

Therefore, it is extremely difficult to provide an indemnity insurance vehicle supported, maintained and subsidised by every solicitor in the country which will be appropriate for all sectors.Furthermore, although the man in the street needs protection, most large multinational and corporate clients can look after themselves and do not require the help of the Law Society or the SIF.

However, practising solicitors are only too aware of the need for good insurance coverage.

The concept of a mutual insurance company is good in theory - but only if it saves the participants money.

It is not good if it loses money and the SIF is now in substantial deficit.Surely it would have been much better some time ago for the legal profession to have placed its insurance in the hands of independent third-party underwriters.

A free market in insurance products exists.

There is no reason to think that once the compulsory mutual scheme is abandoned that the commercial insurance market would seek substantially to increase premiums.

Insurers have to remain competitive and the insurance market is open and international.

New players are appearing on the insurance scene, whether in Bermuda, in the US or elsewhe re.

Banks and financial institutions are beginning to compete with established insurance companies by providing new and sophisticated products.Equally, there is no reason to think that most law firms would not obtain indemnity insurance cover.

And it is arguable that solicitors who cannot obtain the necessary insurance because of their own poor claims record ought not to be allowed to practise.

Motorists who cannot obtain insurance cover are no longer permitted to drive on public roads.In any event, solicitors have now voted convincingly in favour of abandoning compulsory mutual insurance cover and the Law Society Council's decision to accept the result of this vote gives the profession freedom of choice.

Solicitors cannot retain anti-competitive and monopolistic practices when they are encouraging others, such as the Bar Council, to give up restrictive practices.

Why should the Law Society be able to enforce an arrangement whereby all law firms have to buy the first £1 million worth of indemnity insurance cover from the SIF? If the Society is entitled to get away with that, then it could enforce other restrictive or anti-competitive policies on the profession.Indeed, there must be a good chance that the arrangement contravenes European Union competition law.

For example, if all solicitors were obliged to buy, say, £50 million of cover from one insurer, that would surely be an infringement.

The fact that the amounts involved are smaller and that the insurer is a mutual, should not make any difference in principle.

Sizeable businesses are being denied the right to make independent purchasing decisions for an essential business requirement.

Most law firms of any size 'top-up' their cover in the open market and the system seems to work perfectly well.

Why could it not be extended to the first £1 million of compulsory? Surely the public interest would be sufficiently protected if all solicitors had to provide evidence of insurance cover as a condition of renewal of their practising certificates.This protracted saga has been an example of the Law Society trying to be all things to all men.

The Society cannot perform so many diverse functions - regulator, trade union, consumer friend - effectively, particularly when its constituency has become so disparate.