Alternative business structures are just around the corner, and the commodification of law is becoming a reality. Fraser Matheson, a law student about to enter the new commercial world of the law, argues that corporate collapse, social unrest and the global push for equality reveal a society that has forgotten what is right, and indeed what rights are.

Access to justice is not merely important. It is, in my view, the reason lawyers exist. Lawyers exist to ensure that justice is a real and practical thing, and not a mere intellectual abstraction.

Given the sheer banality of this observation, an impartial observer from another planet might well wonder why the issue of access to justice proves so difficult and controversial. The pages of The Firm bear testament to this. It is rare to see a week pass by without a new difficulty arising, or a new scandal or controversy unfolding.

The obvious explanation for the difficulties is cost. Obvious, and yet misleading.

Few lawyers would deny that access to justice matters. Fewer still, however, are able or willing to work for nothing. Lawyers need to earn a living just like everybody else. As has been pointed out in recent weeks, most lawyers already do a considerable amount of work without any real prospect of remuneration. Forcing lawyers to work for free slightly more often is not the answer.

Quite apart from the remuneration reasonably expected by lawyers, the machinery of justice itself costs money. Judges must be paid reasonable salaries. Court buildings must be heated and maintained.

It is easy, therefore, to blame our difficulties with access to justice on cost. But to do so would be somewhat lazy. If our political class and the legal establishment were serious about access to justice, then justice would be made accessible. It is a question of priorities. The wealthiest could be taxed so that the poorest could access justice on equal terms. State spending priorities could be adjusted.

The real issue here is the on-going commodification of justice. Wherever one looks, one sees evidence of this commodification process.

Look at the modern discourse. Note the prevalence of the word “consumer”. What happened to “client”? Consumer implies consumption; consumption implies product. Is the law really a product? Can justice really be packaged up and sold?

Justice used to be administered. Now it is “provided”. The legal profession was once just that: a profession. Now it is a “sector”. Welcome to the age of the “legal services industry”.

The vocabulary betrays a certain manner of thinking. This thinking perceives the law as a commodity to be bought and sold. This is at the heart of the problem. Justice has been re-conceptualised. What was once considered a right is now considered a commodity.

Once justice is conceived as some kind of commodity, then it becomes something which some people can afford and some can not. The question therefore becomes one of resources. How does society set about providing this desirable and important commodity to those who cannot afford it?

Framing the debate in this way loses sight of the point. Justice is not merely a commodity which we would, in an ideal world, quite like everyone to benefit from. Justice is the right of every man, woman and child in our society. Justice must be made available to all, not as some kind of charitable concession, but as a matter of right.

Where justice is perceived as a commodity, its essential nature is lost. Think, for example, of broadband internet. This is a commodity, a service. It is one which our society would like everyone to have access to. But it is difficult to argue that internet access is something which everybody is somehow entitled to as of right.

Access to justice is not like access to the internet. Our society has a duty to provide for the former. Justice is something which all in society are entitled to by virtue of their humanity alone. Justice is not a service. Society must make justice accessible to its least privileged individuals not out of some sense of charity, but out of a sense of duty.

Justice cannot be regarded as simply another policy area in terms of state spending. Justice, and access to justice, is at the very heart of the social contract between the state and the individual. Where society denies justice to an individual, then that individual is alienated from society. The recent English riots are testament to the effects of this alienation. The hollow and pompous rhetoric from politicians about rights and responsibilities is entirely beside the point when one refers to those whose rights the state has ignored.

The debate must begin anew, founded upon a proper understanding of the nature of justice and the legal profession’s responsibility towards it. We must take as our starting point the simple and yet profound truth that justice is the right of us all and so must be available to us all utterly regardless of the cost.

Whatever can be done to achieve this must be done. If that means increasing taxes on the rich, or cutting spending elsewhere, then so be it. We live in a society which prefers to cut off access to justice for the poor, rather than to increase taxes on the rich. That is the very definition of shame.

Am I an idealist? I certainly am, if it is idealistic to have ideals. But I am not naïve. Our society belongs to us all, and collectively we have the power, the right and the duty to shape it as required. The legal profession has a key part to play in this. So far, the profession has failed to be anywhere near radical enough. The debate is bigger than legal aid and more profound than pro bono. It goes right to the heart of what it means to live in a civilised society.

Times are changing. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, it is clear that a new generation of young people stands committed to change. The current generation of lawyers must work with the next in building a civilised society which puts justice at its heart.