Many legal texts are produced in repetitive and standardised communication situations; they are therefore subject to unification and are consequently characterised by formulaicity. Formulaicity can be regarded not only as a significant but also as a constitutive textual property. The aim of this article is to attempt to present formulaicity as a textual property and descriptive category of legal texts and to describe its characteristics both at the level of text structure and at the level of formulation, using the example of the German text type 'Gesetzestext'.