Forget for a moment the row over legal aid tendering – that is nothing compared with what is to come. Judicial review may be an appropriate response to a contracting cock-up, but how do we, as individual solicitors and as a profession, respond to the cuts that are to come?

We should begin by working out what we face. Ken Clarke seems to have submitted proposals for a 25% cut in the legal aid budget. Traditionally, lord chancellors protect the bar at the expense of solicitors, so it is reasonable to expect solicitors to bear a disproportionate share of the burden. We might, therefore, reckon that solicitors will lose, say, £400m of the proffered £500m. That probably amounts to about a third of solicitors’ current legal aid income and perhaps 3% of the profession’s total turnover. Solicitors have, therefore, a significant material interest to defend. Legal aid practitioners are going to feel a cold wind.

That poses a dilemma. The autumn air is going to be riddled with cries of pain from a range of those funded by public money – many of whom, like police officers, air force pilots and social workers, will inescapably have a higher claim for public sympathy than we do. Arguments, seeming perfectly reasonable to lawyers, about disproportionate impact on small firms or ethnic minority solicitors will get little traction. We might, however, want to argue that clients have a right to reasonable access to a solicitor of their own ethnicity. In that case, we should demand that legal aid contracts contain appropriate requirements.

The best defence of existing provision begins with a paradox; acceptance of the intellectual case at least for examination of the case for cuts. In principle, the government must be right to ask if it can achieve equal justice for all citizens at lesser expense. We do not have to go far to see the benefits of such fundamental questioning. Jack Straw’s absurd prison expansion – with its crazed ‘Titan’ rhetoric – has been brought to a juddering halt. Financial restraint has encouraged Ken Clarke’s ministers to start a conversation about the role of rehabilitation that Labour ministers were just too scared to touch.

The prospect of imminent cuts, much like hanging, undoubtedly concentrates the mind. However, legal aid has no readily available equivalent to the non-custodial alternatives to prison – and we have yet to see if these will be properly funded. There are only three variables in legal aid expenditure – eligibility, scope and remuneration. Eligibility is already barely above benefit levels. The axe will fall on scope and remuneration. Since ministers submitted plans virtually within days of appointment, we have to assume that proposals have been made pretty well off the cuff. They are likely to amount to a roundup of the usual suspects. Cut remuneration here and there. And prioritise cuts of scope at the: electorally unpopular (asylum seekers, social security claimants); inconveniently demanding for other government departments (medical negligence litigants, suspects in police stations); and the politically weak (women in family disputes).

It is entirely possible to hold a grand political vision that nothing matters more – including logic and coherence – than balancing the government’s budget. In such a case, there is no place for reason and coherence. However, we can argue – surely correctly – that a minimum requirement of any government’s policy must be to preserve the legitimacy of the constitution. If the poor feel that they will not get fair treatment, then you open up a volatile situation. Inscribed on the walls of the US Supreme Court is ‘equal justice for all’. In the minimum sense of a fair determination of disputes, this must be the essential business of government. You cannot with impunity, for example, allow royalty and bankers access to courts to settle their matrimonial disputes and get away with telling the poor to put up with their problems. You could establish mediation for all, but experiments under Lord Mackay suggested that you would not save money.

There are three key arguments. First, we should agree to participate in discussions about how money might be better spent. For example, we should offer suggestions as to how jury trials might be shortened and the criminal justice system made less complicated. We should be prepared to look at reform of substantive and procedural law to see if the need for legal aid could be reduced. Second, we must demand, on behalf of our clients, that there is detailed examination of the consequences of proposed cuts from the point of view of the poor – and particularly the women who are likely to be disproportionately affected by cuts to civil and, particularly, family provision.

That links to a wider debate about the consequences of the government’s policies. Arguments must, however, be firmly based on the effect on our clients and not ourselves.

Third, any approach to cuts must be holistic and seen over government as a whole. It would be dishonest to argue that legal aid for immigration and asylum, for example, could be cut if the Home Office and its agencies were more efficient – without doing anything to ensure that they were.

Above all, we cannot realistically argue that legal aid is a special case. The scale of the proposed cuts is only slowly being recognised. Boris Johnson, of all people, openly speculates that they may represent David Cameron’s poll tax. We need to deploy our analytical skills to ensure that a desirable trimming of the government’s budget does not degenerate into a blurred coherence of core government responsibilities. A banking crisis does not need to descend into a constitutional one.

Roger Smith is director of the law reform and human rights organisation Justice