Whatever the outcome of the forthcoming general election, it would take a rash and rose-tinted legal sector observer to predict any real terms increases over the next few years in the UK’s £2bn legal aid budget.

Talk of swingeing cuts at those government departments not ‘ringfenced’ from the public spending squeeze makes sober reading. And the Legal Services Commission’s maladroit attempts to allocate what little money there is available – in an environment of sharply increased demand – only serve to compound practitioner gloom.

It remains the case nevertheless that mainstream parties explicitly recognise the value of legal aid to a civilised society. And if real terms increases are not to be funded from general taxation, then it does at least make sense that a debate has begun concerning potentially complementary sources of revenue. One must engage with the world as it is, after all, not as one might like it to be.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve QC, for example, is studying the French system of pooling client monies, which generates extra interest to fund legal aid. That system brings in an extra £300m. He is also known to be looking at other options.

The Gazette’s LinkedIn group, meanwhile, has made its own modest contribution by seeding a provocative debate mooting whether the legal profession might countenance its own Tobin tax – a small tax on legal transactions – to help fund legal aid.