It is impossible to provide a complete and professional conveyancing service at the very low prices some firms offer in an attempt to gain business.

Every solicitor who carries out conveyancing knows that £99, £139 or £199 does not cover the cost involved in ensuring that the client's interests are properly protected.

We have all had to put right the mistakes of firms which use unqualified, inexperienced staff.

Even more worrying, we have all acted for vendors when the purchaser has used a cheap firm and wondered at the lack of proper enquiries and checks.It has always seemed inevitable that one day the cost of this inadequate work would manifest itself in claims on the indemnity fund with the profession as a whole being left to pay the bill.

We are already seeing the warning signs with conveyancing claims at £79 million last year.

Anyone with an ounce of foresight must fear that there is an even greater reservoir of claims building up which will not come to light until clients try to sell or remortgage.

The Law Society's Council must set guideline minimum fees which solicitors would be free to follow or ignore as they choose.

If they abide by them they would continue to enjoy the full benefits of indemnity cover through the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF).

If they choose to charge below those guideline prices they would be obliged to take out separate insurance for that particular case from an insurer approved by the Law Society.

If any claim arose in respect of that case, the SIF and therefore the profession as a whole would not have to bear the burden.For years the SIF has claimed that there was no link between very cheap work and claims.

I have always been suspicious of this because all my experience told me it was untrue.

At last the SIF has released the figures on which it has based this claim.

Judge for yourself.In 1993 the Law Society asked the SIF for help in examining the risk involved in low cost work.

The fund would not release details of individual firms but did agree to monitor the records of 43 known 'cut-price' firms and to compare them with a control group of 25 'ordinary' firms.

Three of the cut-price group have now ceased trading.

(In a 1993 research paper the Law Society defined cut price as the 10% of conveyancing firms then charging under £200 for a £60,000 purchase.)Between 1989 and June 1995 the remaining 40 cut-price firms cost the SIF £4.9 million for claims in respect of residential conveyancing.

Over the same period the ordinary firms cost the fund £0.43 million.

Average residential conveyancing loss per cut-price firm was therefore £121,000.

For the ordinary firms it was £17,500.Commercial conveyancing by the cut-price group cost the SIF another £4.4 million.

For the ordinary firms it was £0.28 million.

Average commercial conveyancing loss per cut-price firm was therefore £110,000.

For the ordinary firms, it was £11,500.For all other work the cut-price group cost the fund £3.71 million.

The ordinary group cost £1.7 million.

Of the 40 cut-price firms, 73% experienced a conveyancing claim and 21 caused the fund to pay out more than they had individually contributed in premiums.

The total loss for them all was 2.36 times greater than the premium income.

Of the 25 ordinary firms, 56% had a conveyancing claim and seven caused the fund to pay out more than was received.

The total loss was 90% of the premium received.Even more alarming is that an analysis of the claims reveals that the rate of growth since 1993 in the value of residential conveyancing claims made by the cut-price sample is almost four times greater than the growth of residential conveyancing claims against the SIF as a whole.The SIF now argues that the sample was not big enough to prove a pattern.

If this is true why did they not increase its size? What was the point of conducting a survey whose results were going to be dismissed on the grounds of an inadequate sample? I believe the figures are accurate.

The ordinary group's pattern closely echoes the fund's overall experience.

The best estimate is that out of the 8500 firms in practice with gross fees exceeding £15,000, less than 500 are cut price in which case the 42 represents about 8%, which is statistically a very adequate sample.On 14 December the President and I will as k the Council to endorse my proposal in principle.

If they do the entire profession will then be consulted formally to find out if it too supports the proposal.

If it does, it will have to decide the level of the guidelines, whether they should apply to just residential conveyancing or commercial as well.Encouraging firms to charge a sensible minimum price will not by itself solve the problem of shoddy work but it will give us some breathing space.

In return the profession will be asked to abide by certain standards of work.

They will be given guidance and help but not coercion.

One aspect which I must stress is that this would apply to mortgage work.

No guideline fee, no cover by the SIF.

Other insurance would be obligatory but I suspect lenders would prefer the SIF cover.All firms would remain full members of SIF for all other work.

In due course those firms which insure a certain percentage of their conveyancing work elsewhere would be entitled to a discount from the SIF similar to that given for low-risk work.

By moving the inherently riskier work out of the fund claims will reduce in time resulting in lower contributions from us all.

By no longer 'insuring the uninsurable' the SIF will become fairer and reduce much of the resentment many firms feel towards it.