The Legal Services and Legal Representation Market

The decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation have repeatedly emphasized the need for the state to guarantee citizens' right to qualified legal assistance. To achieve this, the state must provide the necessary conditions for the training of qualified lawyers and establish professional qualification requirements and criteria. The responsibility for determining such criteria lies with the legislator, who must consider the need to ensure justice, the constitutional principle of adversarial and equality of parties, and the obligation of the state to provide qualified legal assistance to all citizens. However, the legal market in Russia remains fragmented in terms of legal regulation, and the lack of uniform rules for admission to the legal profession and practice, and mechanisms of accountability for lawyers providing low-quality services, undermines the level of constitutional guarantees for qualified legal assistance, creating a favourable environment for fraud. One of the critical challenges is the low level of training of judicial representatives who currently only require legal education to participate in the litigation of civil, arbitration, and administrative cases. Although discussions about the comprehensive legal services reform have been conducted repeatedly, no normative implementation has been established. Therefore, there is an urgent need to resume work aimed at creating entirely new mechanisms of legal regulation that meet modern needs and conditions of society and the state. What professional and ethical qualities should persons providing legal services have? What is the new vector of development of the institute of advocacy and the legal services sphere in Russia? What measures will contribute to the sustainable development of the Bar and the legal services market?