The Lincoln Lawyer

There is no client as scary as an innocent man." J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.

I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.

Well, did he do it?" She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded thoughtfully. "The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.

She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top....

There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.

You're a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wifes and an eight-year-old daughter and we all love you.

There was something pitiful about a woman in jail. I had found that almost all of the time, their crimes could be traced back to men. Men who took advantage of them, abused them, deserted them, hurt them. This is not to say they were not responsible for their actions or that some of them did not deserve the punishments they received. There were predators among the female ranks that easily rivaled those among the males. But, even still, the women I saw in jail seemed so different from the men in the other tower. The men still lived by wiles and strength. The women had nothing left by the time they locked the door on them.

The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation.

If you get into a game of talking to the media, you keep the story alive. Information is oxygen. Without it they die.

Whatever made her happy made me happy—except the time she thought divorcing me would make her life happier. That didn’t do much for me.