Legal activity: methodology, doctrine, modern view
Authors:   Северо-Западный институт управления Российской академии народного хозяйства и государственной службы при Президенте Российской Федерации, Санкт-Петербург, Россия, Александр Анатольевич Беженцев 
Published: December 2024

Relevance. The publication is devoted to the development of the main provisions of the theory of legal activity. The directions of evolution of the legal system of Russia have found their embodiment in many phenomena of legal reality, including legal activity, and the most significant factors influencing the branch of legal works, the legal development of the country, are the tendencies of humanization, democratization, integration, causing changes in the content, forms, goals and other elements of legal activity.
The purpose of the article is to understand the theoretical and methodological foundations of legal activity, the state and prospects of development in the context of the formation of civil society, a socio-legal state, the transformation of the legal system of Russia in the context of its global and Eurasian integration, the preservation of the originality of national law. The purpose of the study determined the definition and solution of the following scientific problems: a) to analyze and summarize the results of legal research of legal activity, identify existing gaps, determine the problems of further study; b) to systematize the methodological approaches of general theoretical studies of legal activity; c) to determine the features of the activity approach and reveal its methodological possibilities for research of legal activity; d) identify and characterize the historical sources of the emergence and development of the professional activity of lawyers; e) determine the dominant properties, social and legal determinacy, and develop an appropriate definition based on the analysis and generalization of general theoretical and other legal studies of legal activity; f) identify changes in the structure, functions, and conditions for the typology of legal activity, taking into account the development trends of legal science and the legal reality of Russia; g) disclose the content of the concept and basic principles of legal practice, systematize its features that have a scientific, theoretical, and normative-legal origin; h) determine the main functional purpose of the practical activity of lawyers in accordance with the role of law in society; i) clarify the existing classifications of types and forms of legal practice, on the basis of which determine the feasibility of identifying new classification criteria; j) characterize the features of legal activity in different legal systems; k) determine the prospects for the professional activity of lawyers in accordance with the directions and trends in the development of the legal system of Russia.
Materials and Methods. The article uses the following methods: dialectics, hermeneutic, historical, structural-functional, systemic, active, classification, comparison, special legal, legal modeling.
Results. The work examines the level of development of the problem, modern approaches to defining the concept and legal activity is defined as a type of legal activity carried out on a professional basis by lawyers; its structural and functional characteristics are clarified, certain constituent elements of the content are analyzed; the scope of practical activity of lawyers, which is linked to the solution of specific legal cases, is separately considered, types of legal work, main tasks, principles, functions are specified. Legal activity is also considered in the applied aspect, taking into account the analysis of the state of development of the legal system of Russia.
Conclusions. The opinion on the immediacy of the connection between the typological features of the legal system and the peculiarities of the implementation of legal activity is substantiated. The most important problems of implementing certain types of legal work, as well as ways to eliminate them, are analyzed. Possible prospects for the development of the legal profession in Russia are outlined, based on the nature of the development of the national legal system, attention is paid to the peculiarities of the implementation of legal activity in the conditions of individual types of national legal systems.