"On the basis of my academic and professional experience, I believe that no felony is committed more frequently in this country than [crimes within] the genre of perjury and false statements," says Harvard Law School's Alan Dershowitz.

A recent survey of more than 50 U.S. state and federal judges, as well as lawyers and academics, conducted by the ABA Journal, found that most of the judges interviewed said that increasingly "lawyers appearing before them are bending the truth, not telling the whole truth, or just plain lying."