Abstract
The paper examines the development – in both Russia and Ukraine – of legal linguistics , which has become more widespread in both countries over the past 15 years. It includes today any areas – legal stylistics, forensic phonetics, legal translation, legal terminology, understanding the language of legislation, the history of legal language, speech in the courtroom etc. The author presents the various publications and the most influential schools of this interdisciplinary field of research. The main lines of development of linguistic approaches are discussed in relation to the needs of Russian and Ukrainian legislation and justice. Particular attention is paid to the problems not yet addressed in current literature.