The Quality of Legal Assistance within the Framework of Approaches and Terminology of the Draft Concept for Regulation of Professional Legal Assistance Market

Abstract

The paper analyzes the general approaches and terminology of the draft Concept of regulation of the professional legal assistance market, prepared by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. The text of the document published in October 2017 is analyzed in the context of the problem of the quality of professional legal assistance (services). The author analyzes the main approaches to solving the problem of the quality of legal assistance, which were consolidated in the document. The author analyses the use of the terms “effectiveness”, “activity”, “inactivity”, “professionalism”, “reasonableness”, “adherence to principles”, “timeliness”, “competence”, “qualification”, “efficiency”, “availability”, “fairness”, “quality” in the draft Concept of regulation of the market of professional legal assistance. In order to organize terminology work properly, it is necessary to identify and analyze legislative and corporate (advocacy) requirements for the procedure and results of legal assistance, which make it possible to establish features (criteria) of the quality of legal assistance and fix them in the form of appropriate terms and definitions in a special terminology system. The “quality problem” in the professional legal assistance market must be addressed through the prism of quality management approaches by creating organizational and legal systems (mechanisms, procedures) that ensure the implementation of the main functions of legal assistance quality management, which, in turn, can be ensured by the formation of a national system of professional legal assistance. The purpose of creating such a system should be to ensure the proper quality of qualified legal assistance provided in the market of professional legal assistance (services).