Obligatory legal assistance to people and legal entities in the Republic of Moldova at the present stage

The institution of compulsory legal assistance is a regulatory legal institution designed to ensure equality of opportunity for citizens in realizing their right to a fair trial. It was already known in Roman law, and nowadays it exists in the legal systems of most countries. In the legal system of the Republic of Moldova, the institution of compulsory legal assistance is an inter-branch institution, which as a structural entity (subinstitute) is part of a larger legal institution of state-guaranteed legal aid, created in 2007 with the adoption of the Law on state-guaranteed legal aid. In this article, the authors analyses the legal norms that together constitute the legal institution of compulsory legal assistance, identifying the structural elements of compulsory legal assistance, and characterizes each of these elements.