The article focuses on particularities of the legal culture of the Western and Eastern regions, value and mental foundations, providing vector of their development. Confrontation between two legal systems determines the context of the global legal interaction. Characteristic features of industrial civilization such as individualism, rationalism, the pursuit of a high level of modernization and secularism do not settle down on the level of legal awareness of the population in Eastern countries and form a two-tier legal system which creates the problem of nihilism in law. The idea of modernization as a linear orientation of development has become outdated, and such values as collectivism, traditionalism, high role of the state, matching rights with other social regulators (morality, religion, etc.), as well as the values of justice, truth — all this takes place in the framework of modern intercivilizational legal dialogue. Tradition in that case becomes harmful when it «preserves» legal matter, when dilutes its value base, internal development potential. On the other hand, the traditional society is the standard of continuity and stability, as evidenced by the duration of Oriental civilizations, timeless value of archaic legal sources and identity of legal culture.