We all lie, usually for good and decent reasons.

Lies are the oil of social interaction: 'No, your bum doesn't look big', 'Gosh, you've lost weight', 'Goodness! You were the best ever'.

Lies are the grease in the cogs of commerce, '.

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my highest offer is .

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the cheque is in the post .

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.'In the good old days, prospective solicitors were interviewed and asked: 'What is the most important quality for a lawyer to possess?' 'Integrity' was the answer we were taught by our teachers and peers to parrot back unthinkingly.

It was the answer th at was accepted equally unthinkingly by the senior members of the profession in those distant days when we were professionals and not yet businessmen.The world has changed in many ways and a readier acceptance by a more cynical society of lies is one of its new developments.

There are now few occasions when societal rules mean you can't lie.

But an oath given in the courtroom is one of those rare occasions when the Walter Mitty world of politics should take a back seat.

However, the court system seems to be having increasing difficulty in determining fact from faction.We lawyers have constructed a formal set of rules for the 'artifice' we call litigation.

Rules that are increasingly alien to society at large.

Truth is the rule of the litigation game and the penalty for the most serious transgressors is a perjury conviction, and a potential disqualification from liberty -- four years in Lord Archer's case.So why is the court system built on the (perhaps, seemingly naive and shaky) foundation that everyone should tell the truth, as they see it? There have been many recent examples of courtroom lying, not least the trial of Jonathan Aitken, which collapsed in a web of deceit.

The question we must now pose is: are the courts still able to cope, particularly in cases involving celebrities and juries?Jeffrey Archer's recent conviction signals a mark in the shifting sands of truth.

A failure to convict would have been a fundamental blow at the foundation of truth on which the court system is built and the rules by which the game is played.Truth is often the casualty when it comes to business and domestic relationships, but society functions because everyone knows the rules of engagement.

The converse is the case in court because it is such an artificial environment.

Once lies are told, the legal system begins to crumble.In this media rich age, courts must now wrestle with the dual challenges of less truth and greater celebrity.

It has always been difficult to convict a celebrity of anything more serious than speeding.

Juries are used to believing every utterance of the celebrity when pushed at them through the tube glowing in the corner of their living room.

So it is little wonder that juries are more gullible when confronted with a celebrity pushing information at them from the corner of a courtroom.The Archer case was not about whether Richard Desmond, will, as the new owner of The Star, be able to claim back (with interest) the damages and costs paid by his forebears to Jeffrey Archer -- he will be.

This case has not been about Jeffrey Archer being stripped of his peerage -- he won't be without an Act of Parliament.

As it was put by a spokesman at the House of Commons who wanted to remain anonymous: 'Peers take their peerages wherever they go.'The Archer case has been about the courts dealing -- not for the first time -- with a celebrity case and the value of lies in society.

Without truth there is no justice -- without lies there is no society.

The new truth is the lies with which we are all spun into believing.