Reel Rundown: ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ provides plenty of suspense while also remaining authentic
If you’ve kept up with the Netflix series “The Lincoln Lawyer,” the fourth season of which is now streaming, you know that things start out with Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) facing big trouble.
Fans of the series recall that the cliffhanger finale of Season 3 featured Haller being arrested after a Los Angeles police officer discovered a corpse in the trunk of his car. And said corpse was of a conman, Sam Scales (Christopher Thornton), who owed Haller a substantial sum of money in unpaid legal fees.
Haller, of course, is the hotshot defense attorney who specializes in being, as he likes to say, the metaphorical axe that cuts down the trees (i.e., murder cases) that prosecutors feed and water. So now he has to put all his efforts into proving his own innocence.
He is aided in this struggle by the members of his firm, headed by his second ex-wife Lorna (Becki Newton), who has evolved from being his legal assistant to his legal partner. Meanwhile, his first wife Maggie (Neve Campbell) is always around to provide support – both emotional and, in a pinch, professional.
Lorna’s husband Cisco (Angus Sampson), once a member of a biker gang, does the firm’s leg work, while Haller’s former driver Izzy (Jazz Raycole) is now his office manager.
All of them are needed because the no-nonsense L.A. city attorney “Death Row” Dana Berg (Constance Zimmer) is intent on convicting Haller. She’s motivated either because she is angry at having lost cases to him in the past or for some other, maybe more nefarious, reason – the cause of which remains a mystery.
That’s the kind of suspense that the series writers, nine of them (along with seven directors), create and mostly maintain over the season’s 10 episodes.
Paramount is Haller’s murder trial, which has him in and out of jail and fighting prosecutor Berg over everything from evidence discovery to the issue of bail. Things get even more thorny when a pair of FBI agents become involved, afraid that Haller’s defense strategy will interfere with their investigation of a biofuel scam perpetrated by a murderous Armenian family.
And it’s not as if Haller’s trial is the only problem that the writers give us. Lorna’s burgeoning legal career is complicated by a couple of tricky cases, and the firm overall faces the loss of income caused by prospective clients’ concerns about Haller’s legal predicament.
Cisco is on the trail of a witness that Haller needs, but his tendency to put himself in danger causes friction with Lorna. Izzy, meanwhile, enjoys a flirtation that may – or may not – involve Haller’s case. Which, again, adds to the suspense.
Unlike your standard law-related series, much of what goes on in “The Lincoln Lawyer” feels authentic – even if, say, you’re married to an attorney (as I am) who can point out the few weak legal plot points. One strength of the trial scenes, though, is the performance of Scott Lawrence as a fair-minded trial judge.
If you’re at all familiar with the novels of Michael Connelly, which provide the source of this series and of “Bosch” (streaming on a variety of services), you know that Haller always comes through. This time, though, his trademark cockiness, if not arrogance, is put to the test.
Two things, then, are clear. First, Haller learns that it’s not a sign of weakness to accept help from those who love you. And second, the final episode gives us another good cliffhanger.
Which signals good news for “Lincoln Lawyer” fans as Season 5 has been officially renewed.