Based on the popular novels of Michael Connolly, who created Detective Harry Bosch and his half brother, Defence Attorney Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), The Lincoln Lawyer has enjoyed a fruitful creative life as a film in 2011, and now, in its second season of a television series. Co-exective producer and writer Ted Humphrey (The Good Wife) was captivated early on by Connolly’s books which he developed into a TV series with David E. Kelley (The Practice, Ally McBeal). “I think what makes Connolly’s books tick is that they’re all modern noir. I really think Michael is kind of the heir to the Raymond Chandler tradition of the great Los Angeles, sun-baked California noir,” asserts Humphrey.

Humphrey is especially attracted to the strong moral compass of the characters in Connolly’s books. Mickey Haller, by virtue of his legal career, sometimes defends “bad” people to win the case. “But nonetheless, he’s got a strong moral compass about what he will and won’t do. Haller knows the difference between right and wrong.”

This moral anchor makes Connolly’s novels popular because audience see how far these characters can be tempted in the face of bad players without succumbing to them.

“We endeavor to make our show a cinematic page turner with cliffhangers, in the same way that the books are. The streaming lens lends itself to that the kind of storytelling,” says Humphrey.

Kelley and Humphrey notably didn’t adapt the books in order of publication. Season one of The Lincoln Lawyer was based on the second book of the series, The Brass Verdict, and season two was based on the fourth book, The Fifth Witness. This was a calculated creative decision.

“There are two aspects to that. The first one was that the movie had already adapted the first book. And so, there was a sense of not wanting to repeat a story that had already been told not that long ago, The second aspect, was that David E. Kelley felt strongly that the story that was being told in The Brass Verdict was a story that people were going to find to be very relatable. It’s the redemption story of a man who is broken when you first meet him, and over the course of that book, and that first season, he gets his mojo back.”

Together with Humphrey’s co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez, and David E. Kelley, they decided on the trajectory the series. The third book in The Lincoln Lawyer series is called The Reversal. Haller is asked to be a special prosecutor on a case that’s been retried. “While it’s a really cool book and a cool story, we felt like it was too early in the life of the show to turn the tables on the audience.” Haller had been set up as a defence attorney not as a prosecutor in the TV series, so the audience may not easily adjust to the change in his role.

Ted Humphrey

Although the book series spans seven novels and Haller’s character is extensively mined, there are further considerations in adapting a novel into a television series beyond the main character. The Fifth Witness was published in 2011. It tells the story of Lisa Trammell, a teacher, who was accused of murdering a mortgage broker after the 2008 mortgage crisis after her home is foreclosed on. “That was very relevant when the book was published. It’s not so relevant now. So, the first challenge we faced was how do we update that to make it relevant to the current world? We focused on the gentrification/ anti-gentrification movement to be roiling Los Angeles and a lot of major cities the moment,” continues the writer.

Lisa Trammell (Lana Parrilla) became a celebrity chef in East Los Angeles battling a real estate developer. This illustrates the convergence of two phenomena – the emergence of fine dining restaurants in previously working class neighbourhoods, and locals being driven out by property developers. The writers also expanded on Mickey’s tempestuous, yet endearing relationships with his ex-wives and his daughter. 

“In the book, Mickey finds Lisa Trammell quite annoying. She’s shrill and difficult to deal with. We thought, that’s not terribly cinematic, so let’s make her the unlikely love interest. First he has a fling with her, and then, this woman’s accused of a crime, and he finds himself in the very awkward legal position when she also becomes his client.” These were big plot deviations from the book.

The novels are told in first person narrative from Mickey’s point of view, so they’re very much his story. In order to make the television series more of an ensemble story, the supporting characters like Lorna Crane (Becki Newton), Cisco (Angus Sampson), and Maggie McPherson (Neve Campbell) are expanded to give them rich and full lives both with Mickey and away from him.

Serialized Format

Many legal procedurals run in series format. Generally, there’s an A-story which is the case of the week, a B-story which is the personal story of the lawyers, and a C-story which is a runner that punctuates the entire season.

The Lincoln Lawyer is mainly serialized. It’s still a show about lawyers and their cases, but in its current streaming iteration, “it’s more complicated, more messy, a little bit darker,” confirms Humphrey.

The TV series utilizes Los Angeles as a story backdrop. “It’s very East L.A. and downtown courtroom L.A.” The locale is a character into itself.

Structurally, the decision to screen the series as two halves was made early on – each half comprising five episodes. “And so, very fortunately and conveniently, we actually had a natural kind of big cliffhanger built into the end of the fifth episode which was initially planned for the end of the season.”

Lisa Trammell (Lana Parilla), Lorna Crane (Becki Newton) & Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) Photo by Lara Solanki/ Netflix

Who is Mickey Haller?

Mickey is a flawed man compelled to get his legal mojo back. “He is the quintessential American story. His father was a successful, famous L.A. defense attorney – a Robert Shapiro kind of guy who represented mobsters and crooked politicians and a lot of cases that were in the headlines back in the day. And his mother was a B level Mexican actress, like a telenovela star who came to Hollywood to make her fortune.” We meet his mother (Angélica María), now named Elena in the second season of the TV series.

Mickey Haller grew up in Los Angeles in the novels. The television series leaned more into his Mexican heritage and cast a Mexican actor with an accent. His backstory was further tweaked for the show. He moved back to Mexico with his mother as a child when his parents divorced and grew up there before returning to Los Angeles.

“Mickey is a kid who grew up in the shadow of his father. On one hand, he resented his father for things that went gone wrong in his parents’ marriage. Like many children of divorce, Mickey partially blamed himself until he realized that his parents are not all knowing and all powerful. At the same time, Mickey clearly idolizes his father and wants to be like him, since he has chosen the same career path.”

Mickey struggles with the duality of not wanting to become his father but clearly wanting to become him

Despite his fallibility, Mickey has a self-awareness of his flaws and potential. “He’s prone to thinking that he knows the right thing to do. He’s often wrong on that, and that leads him into trouble. He’s stubborn, proud, and a bit arrogant sometimes,” continues Ted Humphrey.

“And yet, he has this very strong moral compass and a very strong sense of what’s right and wrong in the world. He also has a very strong desire to fix that. He has a real thing for underdogs that kind of defines defense attorneys in general, but in particular, I think it defines Mickey.“