  The present experimental status of searches for lepton flavor violating
decays of the $\tau$ lepton to a lighter mass lepton and a photon or a
pseudoscalar meson is presented. The results obtained are from $e^+e^-$
annihilation data collected at a center-of-mass energy near 10.58 GeV by the
\babar and the Belle detectors. In order to benefit from larger available
datasets, the first $\babar-$Belle combinations of upper limits on the
branching fractions of lepton flavor violating $\tau$-decays are obtained.
