As far as I am aware there is not one insurance expert on the Law Society Council, and yet this week the Council will determine the future of the solicitors' professional indemnity insurance.

It seems likely that the profession will be pitched onto the open market in response to pressure exerted by an alliance of the November and Millennium groups.The legitimate grievances of the November Group have been largely addressed by risk banding.

In such circumstances it is perhaps unfortunate that the most affluent sector of the profession has found itself unable to take a more inclusive view of the problems faced by the profession.

While one has enormous sympathy for the Millennium Group, it nevertheless represents a sector of the profession which has been responsible for much of t he profession's negligence but which is not prepared to accept collective responsibility for its actions.The Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF) is a soft target.

Yes, the shortfall was a mistake and the profession is due an apology for that.

But year in, year out insurance companies have shortfalls of their own; they simply raise their premiums to restore the particular 'book' to profitability.

Twenty three years ago the master policy, the forerunner of the SIF, was introduced because many competent solicitors simply could not get cover on the open market.

During the early 90s many architects and surveyors were forced to choose between practising without insurance and going out of business, as insurers struggled to restore those books to profitability following the collapse in the property market.

The SIF was not alone in this respect.The suggestion that the SIF is badly managed is a myth.

Its claims-handling costs are substantially less than those of private insurers, and its expertise in this area is acknowledged by an insurance industry which often turns to it for advice.

Its administrative costs are a fraction of those in the private sector.

It makes no profit and pays no insurance tax.So given this considerable advantage why is it that even high-risk firms have apparently been able to obtain quotes on the private market that undercut the SIF's rates? Is it that the insurance industry is attempting to destroy the SIF only to ratchet up the premiums when it has disappeared? For an answer I turned to the three insurance experts on the SIF's board.

Their working lives have been spent in the insurance industry.

In the current highly-charged emotional atmosphere they are the only people I can trust to be objective, having, as they do, a foot in both camps.They all give the same answer.

The insurance market is driven by capital.

At the present time the market is awash with capital -- much of it from the US, where there is a philosophy that all capital must be exposed to risk.

The excess capital is driving down premiums to a level that, in the long term, are not sustainable.

When investors find that they are not getting a return on their capital they will withdraw it from the market.

Rates will rise dramatically.

Many perfectly competent firms will find either that they cannot get cover, or that cover has been unilaterally withdrawn for certain categories of work.

Given that the Master of the Rolls will still require all firms to hold comprehensive indemnity cover, those firms will have to close.

Ironically, those firms represented by the Millennium Group are likely to find themselves most at risk.The profession would do well to heed the comments of Bernard Day, a past managing director of the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, when he remarked that the profession will live to rue the day that it allows the SIF to go to the wall.