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Mention the word “lie” and you’ll soon hear, “Lawyers lie.”

Let me wear my lawyer’s hat for a moment.

If you mean that lawyers lie in court, then those lawyers are in big trouble.  There is a huge rule when you’re in court that overrides everything else.  It is “Thou shalt not mislead the court.”  And there is a related, practical guideline, “Thou shalt not irritate the judge.”  If a lawyer lies to a judge or misleads a judge, I can assure you that the judge will be a lot more than irritated; they will be furious.  And not only that, lying in court or misleading the court is enough to get that lawyer disbarred.

Now let me wear my communicator’s hat.

No-one likes to be lied to.  A lie is a statement that is known to be false.  If I say something that isn’t true but I think that it is true, I  haven’t lied to you.  I have said something that’s false, but I didn’t know it.  And no-one likes to be deceived or misled.

In order to function, we need to know what’s going on.  We need reliable, accurate information, because that’s what we base our plans on.  When we’re given wrong information, it’s frustrating because we have to change what we’re doing.  But when we’ve been given wrong information deliberately  —  when we’re lied to, deceived or misled — not only are we frustrated and have to change things, we also recognize that someone was trying to harm us, or at least cause us problems.  Our reaction is anger as well as frustration.

We have an internal “lie detector” that helps us detect when people are lying to us or when they’re hiding something from us.  This internal lie detector works by catching mismatches, and when it does, we feel a little ping or nudge that says, “Pay attention.  Something’s not right.”  If someone says, “I’m happy,” but their head is drooping and they’re scowling, your internal lie detector catches that mismatch.  When someone is happy, they stand/sit a bit taller, their head is up, and they’re smiling.  That’s how we know someone is happy.  But when someone is slouching, their head is drooping and they’re scowling, we know they’re not happy  —  even if they say they are happy.  There’s a mismatch between their words, their body posture and their facial expression.

If your internal lie detector detects a mismatch, you may think, “They’re lying,” instead of, “I need to check this out further.”

Sometimes you hear a lawyer say something that you know isn’t true.  Since a lot of their information comes from their client, they may not have all the information.  Most likely, the lawyer isn’t knowingly saying something that’s false or hiding information to mislead you,  they’re just telling their client’s side of the story.

It’s easy to assume that what a lawyer says is their own personal opinion or belief.  Most of the time when we’re lawyering, we’re presenting our client’s position and their opinions.  We don’t have to agree with a client in order to represent them.  It’s a lot easier when we do agree, but that’s not always the case.  A lawyer defending a person accused of a crime doesn’t have to believe that the client was right or that the client didn’t do the crime in order to defend the person.  It’s the job — and the duty — of defense counsel to make sure that the trial is fair, that only proper evidence is allowed in, and that witnesses are telling the whole truth.  If the lawyers knows that the accused person did do the crime, the lawyer can’t say that the accused person did not do the crime.  That would be misleading the court, if not lying.  See the overriding rule above.

I’m not saying that lawyers never lie.  What I am saying is that when our internal lie detector tells us about a mismatch, we need to check it out further.  Are they saying something that they know is false?  Are they withholding information?  Are they telling us only part of the story?  Or is something else going on?

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