This paper examines theoretical and applied issues of establishing the content of the category “abuse of law”. At the first stage of the study, the author analyzes the approaches to determining the content of the lexical unit “abuse of law” that have been developed in modern civil science, identifies common and distinctive features and proposes her own methodological approach to defining the term in question. Analysis of the doctrine of civil law allows us to draw a conclusion about diametrically opposed approaches to defining the evaluation category “abuse of law”. Next, the latest law enforcement practice of arbitration courts is examined, and there are highlighted the main problems arising in law enforcement practice when qualifying transactions according to the criterion of the presence of elements of abuse of law. A comprehensive theoretical and applied analysis underlies the author’s approach to determining criteria for establishing signs of abuse of law, which can be applied both when considering specific cases and when studying the legal construct “abuse of law”.