But she used a clip from the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar to open a Nashville Bar Association seminar on legal gamesmanship and the question, "When is a lie not a lie?"

Unfortunately, Corley said, many people believe lawyers are like Carrey's character, an attorney whose legal career is hampered by his sudden inability to speak anything but the truth.

And the public's perception of lawyers hasn't been helped any by high-profile cases such as the Clinton impeachment saga, the O.J. Simpson murder trial and tobacco manufacturers' suppression of research on the harmful effects of smoking, Corley said.

She was the moderator at a panel discussion Thursday night that was organized by the Nashville Bar Association's "Colleagues" mentoring program for young lawyers.

Watergate prosecutor James F. Neal said that while the rules of ethics won't let lawyers tell or present lies in court, that shouldn't stop them from using facts to "create a false impression" if that will help a client.

"One misperception is that a trial is a search for the truth," said Neal, a famed Nashville trial lawyer whose clients have included Exxon, Ford Motor Co. and Vice President Al Gore.

"It is not, except in the broad sense of guilt or not guilt. Each side presents, and is entitled to present, its own truncated, shortened version of the truth."

That prompted U.S. District Judge Robert Echols to say that while lawyers are not obligated to present all of the facts in court, a trial judge must be "watchful over the truth" that jurors attempt to determine from the conflicting facts that they hear.

"I take that seriously, and we must take it seriously," Echols said. "It's not just gamesmanship."

State lawyer discipline official Laura Chastain noted that lawyers are often caught between their obligations to protect a client's secrets and to be honest with the court.

The rules of ethics enforced by the Tennessee Supreme Court require a lawyer to withdraw from representing a client if he knows that the client plans to lie in court, but that's hard to do if a trial is already under way, Chastain said.

Vanderbilt University law professor Susan Kay said her students like to debate "what it means to know" that a client is lying.

"What standard does each student want to use as to knowledge?" Kay said. "That has to be your own moral decision."

Chastain warned the 60 lawyers present Thursday night not to coach their clients too aggressively on what to say in court.

"Never suggest to your client the answers to give," Chastain said. "We have had some situations where the client was tape-recording the lawyer and the lawyer is telling the client what to say under oath. This isn't good."

But, Neal said, "I don't think it's unfair at all to try to educate your client" on the law, the strength of the case and how he or she is coming across.

Neal said that one of his best-known clients, film director John Landis, appeared at first to be "a horrible witness" because he obviously "resented" being indicted for manslaughter after three actors were killed when a helicopter crashed during filming of the Twilight Zone movie in 1982.

Landis "came out, after viewing himself (during a practice session that Neal videotaped), as one of the most impressive witnesses I had ever had."

Davidson County Circuit Judge Frank Clement Jr. said it's nothing new for lawyers to be unpopular.

But if the public does not have faith in the overall integrity of the court system, Clement said, "they're going to take care of (disputes) themselves," with weapons if necessary.

The public's dim view of many of the lawyers in the Clinton impeachment case resulted partly from the use of legal language and procedures in what was not really a trial but "a political process," Kay said.

"Neither (law nor politics) is helped by the other," she said.