Social relations, due to their ambivalence, require a variety of approaches to their regulation. Law, as a universal system of regulation of relations objectively embodies its properties in the formulation of normative requirements of mandatory nature, which are actualised in various forms of legal impact on society. In order to achieve a greater degree of efficiency of regulation, in addition to the norms of law, symbols, signs, actions, and legal fictions are used. The implementation of these means implies simplification of perception of legal prescriptions for use in the models of behaviour of an indefinite circle of persons. The purpose of the research is to study the nature of legal symbols, to distinguish them from related concepts, to determine the areas of application and to establish the possibilities of their use in ‘new spheres’. The study relies on the following methods: general scientific - analysis, synthesis, comparison, as well as special methods of studying legal symbols - historical-legal, technical-legal and system-classification. The study has achieved the results that show that legal symbols are historically established, stable external expressions of legal requirements to the participants of social relations. They are close in nature to other iconic and related legal forms of regulation of human activity, but are characterized by a higher degree of categorical legal requirements, stability and scope of their application. Signs as legal forms have a lower degree of content, are used in narrow specific types of social interaction, in the process of application of new information technologies the emergence of previously unknown sign legal forms is observed.