In the article we note separate historical stages in the formation and de-velopment of the semantics of the word "zakonnik (lawyer, legalist)" in Russian. On the example of journalistic texts from the National Corpus of the Russian language and some other periodicals, the semantic spectrum of the modern word is analyzed. The word, which had several semantic variants already in the 19th century, preserved and expanded its poly-semantic character. The analysis allows us to identify the modern meanings of the word and the possibility of its usage in fundamentally different spheres of social life in Russia – both regulated by legal norms and criminal, in which the word legalist as belonging to thieves' slang is synonymous with the name of the main thief authority (the thief in law). At the same time, the available dictionary data does not reflect the whole diversity of the semantic spec-trum of the word. Features of the functioning of the token lexeme are manifested in the pres-ence of a wide range of connotations – positive and negative, generated by extralinguistic factors and reflecting the modern consciousness of Russian native speakers. The main atten-tion is paid to objects that are nominated by this word (mostly names of persons: judge, lawyer, prosecutor, policeman, bailiff, etc.), and various aspects of the activity of lawyers, estimated by the speakers – in this case by journalists. When connotative nuances of words are identified in the context, the authors of the article rely on its lexical environment, which allows to highlight those characteristics of the person and / or his activity that deserve a positive or negative evaluation. An appeal to the language of the mass media seems to be effective, because of its ability to reflect quickly the changes occurring in the language, as well as the prevailing moods and opinions about certain aspects of public life in society.