Legal assistance: current state, problems and prospects

The access to the competent legal assistance is recognized as one of the key national social tasks. The importance of legal assistance as an independent guarantee of rights, freedoms and legitimate interests is of no doubt. The important question is to what extent a free legal assistance is necessary and demanded in present-day conditions. The goal of research described in the article is to study the status, problems and prospects for developing the Russian system of free legal assistance today. The research mainly used theoretical and empirical general scientific methods and specific scientific methods, such as analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction and comparison, as well as questionnaire survey. As part of the goal, we have studied main aspects of the free qualified legal assistance to the population. The research findings show that the lack of the population awareness of legal support services, and sometimes even their legal illiteracy, causes many people to be afraid to apply for free legal assistance. In addition, findings of the research on the attitude of younger generation to free legal assistance allow us to develop some practical recommendations on how to improve the level of legal culture and literacy of the population. The author considers in the article some aspects of providing legal assistance to the population and try to answer the question: do present-day youngsters need legal assistance, and how they regard the existing organization of legal support for the population.

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