The investigation focuses on the study of linguistic methods of impact in professional discourse. The research outlines the grounds for professional discourse classification and highlights textual and communicative characteristics of professional discourse. The objective of the study is to determine the range of language means that may help to create communicative impact within the framework of professional interaction. The contribution describes one of the stages of professional discourse investigation in order to demonstrate the results of active effect discourse analysis on the syntactic level. The article highlights the features of the implementation of pragmatic strategies of defense statements. This type of legal discourse is considered in comparison with other ways of implementation of legal discourse, as well as with other types of active effect discourse. The study has demonstrated that when choosing quantitative and qualitative parameters of syntactic means used in legal texts their authors should take into account genre characteristics of these texts. Expressive syntactic means are intensively used in judicial defense statements in order to intensify the impact they produce on the audience. The research has revealed that among expressive syntactic means most frequently use in defense statements are the following: parallelism, anaphora, asyndeton, climax, and parenthetical insertions. The publication also aims to demonstrate the potential of the applied methodology in terms of further investigation of various types of professional discourse; such investigation may allow to outline the most efficient means of speech impact in professional discourse, and therefore, to increase the effectiveness of professional interaction.