The study aims to provide a comprehensive characteristic of lexical parameters of legal discourse, the communicative-pragmatic meaning of which is realised at the structural-semantic, content-thematic levels of the utterance. It is noted that legal discourse has peculiar lexico-semantic features due to its main purpose to regulate the communicants’ behaviour in situations of institutional communication established by law in accordance with the system of social role characteristics, prescriptions, instructions, requirements and standards of conduct. Scientific novelty lies in identifying the discursive-semantic patterns of institutional communication formation based on the lexico-semantic organisation of legal discourse. As a result, it has been found that the lexical continuum of legal discourse conforms to the stylistic norms of the modern Russian literary language. Lexical means, being verbal formulas of interpretation of the essence of legal communication, occupy a special place in legal discourse and specifically reflect its significant elements.