The paper deals with two central genres of judicial discourse – a complaint initiating the court procedures, and the judicial decision summing up the proceedings. The author of the paper argues that the legal discourse is a complex multidimensional formation with overlapping institutional and personalized forms of communication. The research is based on the concept of a discursive expert community, the participation/nonparticipation in which leaves its stamp on the character of discursive practices. The author calls in question the well-established view on legal discourse as a purely institutional formation. The paper affirms that the participation/nonparticipation in a legal discursive community influences the interpretation of the same legal phenomena due to different types of thinking and of world pictures (ordinary vs. professional).