One of the themes emerging from this week's extended look at the sweeping reform of legal aid currently going through Parliament is that lawyers in general struggle to mount effective campaigns for worthwhile shifts in public policy. In the case of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, it was always going to be an uphill struggle.

Lawyers aren't that popular on the Clapham omnibus and that kind of painfully complex reform is very difficult to energise debate with. This political reality is why legal aid, despite being a relatively tiny slice of social provision, has seen its budget already curtailed considerably during the last decade – its current £2.1bn level actually peaked in real terms 10% higher back in 2003-04. All this before the Government gears up to knock another £350m annually off the budget via a huge withdrawal of civil legal aid.

Yet even allowing for the difficulty of opposing a Bill that is so easy for the Government to present as taking on legal self-interest, the debate on legal aid illustrates the extent to which the profession struggles to find a unified voice. The various legal and campaign groups individually made generally credible and committed attempts to press for change (the Law Society made one of its better efforts).

Some of the alternative funding proposals looked convincing; some didn't, but the profession rarely looked self interested. But it's hard to escape the conclusion that the inability of the legal profession to band together to campaign on the basis of clear, potentially achievable points let the Government off easy. It would surely help if the Law Society and Bar Council could find more common ground.

This is certainly relevant in the field of legal aid, but it speaks to a wider failure by the profession to come together in the many areas in which the law impacts on society. It's a shame because lawyers – even City lawyers – care about these things more than many assume. The absence of that voice has allowed successive Governments to whip up fears about a compensation culture that simply doesn't exist and now to push on with deep cuts that will hit many of the most vulnerable members of society and arguably end up kicking costs down the road to be picked up in increased welfare spending.

It's also apparent that a major overhaul of legal aid has been pushed through in the absence of a mature debate about what we expect from the civil justice system and how it should be delivered. Of course, there are merits to the Ministry of Justice's push for legal aid reform, and civil justice couldn't have escaped the wider cuts facing Britain. But until the legal profession finds a stronger voice, civil justice will remain too easy a target for administrations looking to save money without too much political fuss.