What the field earns and how big the market is
For 2025, 2,468 firms in division 69 — legal and accounting activities — and 1,316 in division 70, management consultancy, filed financial statements. Together that makes almost 3,800 firms, with around 5,800 people and sales revenue of almost 3.5 billion lei. Their number grew compared with 2024 in both divisions, by more than 400 firms in all.
On average, a firm here has fewer than two employees. That, in practice, sums up the whole sector: people working on their own account or in very small teams, with loyal clients and low fixed costs.
Wages are above average. At the end of 2025, average gross monthly earnings were roughly 20,600 lei in legal and accounting activities and 23,300 in management consultancy, against about 16,400 for the economy as a whole. The tiles above show neither wage, because the page covers both and the gap between them is almost 2,700 lei.
Lawyers, notaries and bailiffs are not in these figures. Their offices are not firms registered with the Public Services Agency, and the statistics do not count them as such.
First decide whether you have a firm or a profession
It looks like a formal question, but it decides where you register, how you are taxed and whether you need us.
A firm means accounting, tax consultancy, legal consultancy without representation in court, audit, management consultancy and public relations. All of them are opened like any SRL: name, CAEM codes, articles of association, a file at the Public Services Agency. None requires a licence. Audit adds a register and rules on ownership, but it remains a firm.
A profession means lawyer, notary, bailiff, mediator and authorised insolvency administrator. For each of them, the law states explicitly that the activity is not entrepreneurial. Their forms — lawyer’s office, individual office, associated office, mediation office — are registered with the Ministry of Justice, and the right to practise comes from a licence or a certificate, after a traineeship and an examination.
The line is not always where a client would expect it. An experienced legal adviser can open an SRL and sell advice, contracts, compliance and representation before the authorities. They cannot plead in court and cannot defend anyone in a criminal case. From the moment a client has a dispute, the firm works together with a lawyer.
The legal professions, one by one
The lawyer: a lawyer’s office or an associated law office, nothing else
The Law on the Bar allows exactly two forms: the lawyer’s office, in which the lawyer works alone and acts in legal relations as an individual, and the associated law office, made up of at least two lawyers, which is a legal entity and tax-transparent. A lawyer may found only one of the two.
The road there: a law degree, an admission examination for the traineeship, a traineeship of up to 24 months with a lawyer who has at least five years of practice — the qualifying examination can be taken after 12 — and the licence, issued by the Ministry of Justice for 450 lei, for an unlimited term. Anyone who has worked for ten years as a judge or prosecutor is exempt from the traineeship.
After the licence you have 60 days to register the office. Missing the deadline triggers disciplinary liability, and the profession cannot be practised without a registered form of organisation. All lawyers are members of the Bar Association.
A lawyer may employ specialists — legal advisers, accountants, assistants — but they do not have a lawyer’s rights and cannot provide legal assistance on their own.
The notary: a vacant post, not just an examination
Notarial practice is the only profession on the page where being qualified is not enough. Every three years the Ministry of Justice sets the number of notaries for each territory, based on population, area and economic needs, and the posts are filled by competition.
The conditions: Moldovan citizenship and residence, a law degree, an 18-month traineeship — three months for doctors of law — and a qualifying examination, held no more than twice a year. The licence costs 450 lei. Appointment by order of the Minister follows, with professional liability insurance.
The notary’s office is not a legal entity: it is simply the place where the notary carries on their work. A notary may not advertise and may not take on any other paid activity apart from teaching, scientific, creative and mediation work.
The bailiff: one post per 22,000 inhabitants
Only a licensed and appointed bailiff may carry out enforcement. The law limits their number to one bailiff per 22,000 inhabitants and to at least two in the district of each court.
The conditions include a law degree, age under 65, a traineeship of at least 18 months, one month of it at the National Institute of Justice, and an admission examination whose results are valid for one year. The trainee is paid at least the minimum wage. The licence costs 450 lei. Appointments are made in order of average examination score and choice of territory.
A bailiff works in an individual or associated office. The associated office is a legal entity, tax-transparent, and can be formed only by bailiffs from the same district. Liability insurance is mandatory.
A mediator needs neither legal studies — any bachelor’s degree will do — nor a vacant post. What they need is initial training with a provider accredited by the Mediation Council, a certification examination and the certificate issued by the Ministry of Justice, again for 450 lei. The profession is compatible with any other, unless the law governing that other profession says otherwise, and it is open to foreign nationals too.
A mediator works in a mediation office, which has no legal capacity, or in a mediation organisation. The mediation organisation is the only form across all the legal professions that registers with the Public Services Agency — but it is a non-commercial legal entity, with the approval of the Mediation Council and at least two mediators on its list. An SRL cannot be a mediation organisation.
One limit worth remembering: a mediator may not give legal advice in the dispute they are mediating.
The authorised insolvency administrator
This is the fifth profession in the family and the one closest to the world of accounting: the law accepts a degree in law, economics or a technical field, with three years of experience. Then come a 12-month programme of theory and traineeship, an examination before the Authorisation and Disciplinary Commission, and authorisation from the Ministry of Justice, for 450 lei. The administrator works from an office, alone or associated with other administrators, and must hold professional insurance.
How the legal professions are taxed
Lawyers, notaries, bailiffs, authorised administrators and mediators have a tax regime separate from that of companies: income tax of 12% of annual taxable income, after deductible expenses, calculated for the year and paid quarterly. Their activity is exempt from VAT without the right to deduct. Books are kept by single entry on a cash basis, and no financial statements are prepared.
Audit: the firm you cannot control unless you are an auditor
What separates it from an accounting firm is not the registration procedure but the ownership structure. More than 50% of the capital must belong to auditors, the director must be an auditor, and the majority of the executive body must be auditors too. An entrepreneur who wants to build an audit firm without being an auditor can only be a minority shareholder.
The auditor’s certificate is obtained after at least two years of traineeship, employed by an audit entity, under the guidance of an auditor. The examination is open to candidates with a university degree in economics or law and three years of experience, two of them in traineeship; fifteen years of experience take the place of the traineeship. The examination covers auditing, financial and management accounting, financial management, law and information technology. The certificate is free and does not expire.
Once it is operating, the firm faces a few rules that shape its business:
- Two auditors for large clients. Auditing large entities, public-interest entities and state enterprises requires at least two auditors on the payroll. A firm with a single auditor can audit medium-sized entities but cannot compete for the large clients.
- Rotation. The auditor in charge of the engagement changes after seven years with the same client and does not return for two years.
- Separation of services. An audit client cannot buy bookkeeping, tax consultancy or management consultancy from the same firm in the same period.
- Quality control. Every auditor undergoes an external review at least once every six years, or every three years if they audit public-interest entities.
Payments to the Public Audit Oversight Council — for registering the firm, for each audit report, and the auditor’s annual contribution — are set as fractions of the forecast average monthly wage for the economy, so they change from year to year.
The client answers for its accounts, you answer through the contract
One thing every accounting firm must put in the contract from day one: the law leaves liability for keeping the accounts and for financial reporting with the client’s director, and the financial statements are signed by the same people. The fact that someone else keeps the books does not shift that liability.
What shifts the risk between you is the service contract: which documents you receive and by when, who answers for a fine caused by a delay, what happens to the archive when the engagement ends. An accounting firm working without a well-drafted contract is in effect taking on the client’s risk without being paid for it.
The thresholds in the Accounting Law decide what each client files and whether it is subject to mandatory audit. From 1 January 2027 they go up, which means that some of today’s medium-sized entities become small and drop out of mandatory audit, and some of today’s small entities become micro-entities. For an accounting firm, this is a change in reporting for its clients. For an audit firm, it is a change of market. The obligations a newly opened company has in its first months, from the client’s point of view, are set out in full in the guide to accounting in the first months.
For an accounting, legal consultancy or management consultancy firm, an SRL. Liability stays limited to the share capital, there is no minimum capital, the form admits foreign founders, and it is the one corporate clients expect when they sign a long-term service contract.
Setting up as a sole trader is tempting for anyone who works alone, but it has a flaw that weighs heavily here: unlimited liability, with all of your personal assets. In a line of work where a wrong return or a badly drafted contract can cost the client a large sum, personal exposure is not theoretical.
For audit, the law takes the choice away: an audit entity is an SRL or a joint-stock company. The same goes for the legal professions: their forms are those set out in each profession’s own law, and the SRL is not one of them.
Public relations consultancy has one more option. Class 70.21 is the only class on the page included in the list of activities open to the independent entrepreneur regime, with a single tax of 15% on income of up to 1.2 million lei a year and 35% above that. The other classes — accounting, audit, legal activities, management consultancy — are not on the list.
We can handle the choice of codes, the articles of association, registration with the Public Services Agency and opening the bank account, and from the first month we can also take over your company’s accounting. What each service includes and what it costs is set out on the corporate services page.
