The Legal Status of Law Societies in Russian Federation

The present work is dedicated to the study of the organization of the Bar in the Russian Federation, the identification of existing problems in the legal regulation and ways of their solution. The author analyzes the history of the development of the Bar and advocacy activity in Russia, examines the current legislation with regard to the role of the Bar, the essence of the agreement on legal assistance, the lawyer’s status and the legal status of the law societies. The writer accomplished a comparative legal analysis of the forms of law societies in the Russian Federation and in a number of foreign countries - Germany, France, the United States of America and the United Kingdom, in such aspects as the possibility of organizing advocacy activity in the form of commercial legal entities and the presence or lack of ability of lawyering up. The result of the work is the elaboration of a number of proposals for the modernization of Russian legislation in the field of the legal profession.