Just about everything the public perceives about the legal profession - from what lawyers are like to how they win or lose trials - people glean from TV dramas like "LA Law" and "The Practice," movies such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Verdict" and books by the likes of John Grisham, author of "The Firm" and other pieces of pop fiction, according to law Professor Michael Asimow.

And that's why lawyers and law students must pay close attention to how they and their profession are being portrayed, he said.

Asimow and a dozen other law professors and attorneys from around the country made their case for the profound influence of popular entertainment on the legal profession during the Law and Popular Culture Symposium Feb. 23. A number of writers and consultants from popular television shows joined nearly 300 law students, faculty members and practicing attorneys at the daylong event sponsored by the UCLA Law Review.

"Popular culture is the most effective teaching tool ever invented," said Asimow, who co-authored the book, "Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies," with UCLA law Professor Paul Bergman. As "trashy" as much of popular culture is, Asimow said, "the general public learns its information, its disinformation, all of its attitudes about the legal system, law and lawyers from works of popular culture ... which often they have forgotten is fiction and internalize as real."

In order to better practice their profession, he said, attorneys should study popular culture for the lessons it imparts.

Carrie Menkel-Meadow, a former UCLA law professor who currently teaches at Georgetown University Law Center, said that when she needs examples of ethical dilemmas for her class lectures, she closes her casebooks and tunes into "The Practice," which she described as "an ethics teacher's dream."

"There are enough ethical dilemmas in that show every week to keep classes going for hours," she said.

What she especially appreciates about "The Practice," she said, is that it features actual discourse about these dilemmas. "Ellenor and her partners try to figure out what to do," Menkel-Meadow noted.

The show also depicts positive aspects of lawyering, she said - lawyers as good people and good professionals.

Such portrayals are uncommon these days, said Asimow. In an analysis he conducted of popular culture, he found that from the 1930s to 1970, lawyers were generally portrayed as good human beings and as excellent and competent professionals. "But since 1970," he said, "about two-thirds of lawyers in film have been just the opposite: miserable, repulsive human beings, and unethical and incompetent professionals."

Worst of all are pop culture's portrayals of law firms.

"There's something about putting lawyers together that brings out the very worst in their personalities," Asimow said, citing as an example the 1948 film, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which director Orson Welles compares a law firm's lead characters to a school of self-devouring sharks. "This is the basis, I think, of all the jokes we've all heard about lawyers as shark bait," he said.

While these negative depictions are inevitably exaggerated, Asimow said, they often point to genuine real-life problems, from "the inhuman demand on young lawyers to bill unbelievable hours" to "the marginal ethical decisions made every day in law firms.

"For that reason," he said, "thinking about works of popular culture not only helps lawyers understand the general public, but it also helps us understand ourselves."