Background: Regulations are some guidelines that originate from the operational environment and lead to controlling the community. Nurses and related organizations should be aware of the international and national legal rules to be more effective in their operational environment.

Aim: In the present study, the necessity of legal awareness of the nurses is investigated.

Methods: In this qualitative study, the conventional content analysis was employed based on the semi-structured interviews with 18 participants including a judge, forensic medicines, nurse attorneys, nurses (with different specialties), a medical lawyer and forensic midwives.

Results: The category of “The necessity of legal awareness of nurses” with 7 sub-categories consisted of Lack of legal awareness of nurses ,Challenges of getting informed consent, Increased nursing errors, Increased responding of nurses, Disregard for nurses ’rights ,Disregard for patients’ rights and Insufficient reporting were obtained.

Conclusion: Considering the main role of the nurses in providing care in the health system and the necessity of knowing legal concepts by them, the teaching of these concepts should be included in nursing courses and curriculum for nursing students at different levels of academic education.

Keywords: Nursing, Legal, Education, Qualitative research, Iran