In the mid-2000s, television über-producer David E. Kelley read Michael Connelly’s new legal thriller, The Lincoln Lawyer. It was the first in what would become a six-book series by Connelly featuring Mickey Haller, a deft Los Angeles attorney who works from the back of a black car. Meanwhile, Kelley was the showrunner behind courtroom hits like The Practice and Ally McBeal. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Kelley took an interest in Connelly’s story.

But Connelly’s reaction? An expletive. “When David Kelley is interested in something, you drop everything,” Connelly tells Tudum. ”But it was too late — I had signed a contract.” The contract was for the 2011 iteration of The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey (pre-Lincoln car commercials). And so, before the stories reached Kelley’s hands, another version of the book made it to the big screen.

Despite the nearly two decades it took to make the show, Connelly doesn’t regret the way things turned out. “That movie was very good, and I got to meet Matthew McConaughey,” he says. And then it was Kelley’s turn.

Based on the second novel in the series, The Brass Verdict, the long-awaited Netflix iteration of The Lincoln Lawyer sees Mickey (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) thrust into the spotlight when he’s assigned a high-profile double-murder case. After spending the past year and a half recovering from a surfing accident — and a subsequent painkiller addiction — Mickey takes on one of the biggest cases of his career: His tech entrepreneur client, Trevor Elliott (Christopher Gorham), insists he’s innocent in the murder of his wife and her lover. Adding to the tension? Trevor’s first lawyer was found dead and mysteriously left his entire roster of clients to Mickey. 

“This guy is getting his mojo back,” Connelly says, adding that the decision to start Mickey’s story right in the middle is perhaps the most relatable direction. “There's a lot of people who have never defended a murder suspect or even been in a courtroom, but they can connect with somebody who's been knocked down and is trying to get back up. That's the backbone of the story and that's what [Kelley] wanted to do.”

As the season unfolds, it’s clear that Connelly and Kelley took real world inspiration to create a fictional narrative around Mickey’s 2022 life. “I draw a correlation between what's going on in this show and what's going on in the world: We've been knocked down by the pandemic and other things for the last couple years, and we're all trying to get our mojo back,” Connelly says. “The defense attorney is the lone guy against the well-funded and populated police departments and prosecutors. It's a classic underdog story about a guy getting back on his horse and that's what we're doing in society. That makes it the right moment. Did we know that when we were going to make it? No. I think we really got lucky.”

But there was an automatic road bump to overcome by choosing to start with this book: In the novel, Mickey becomes intertwined with LAPD detective Harry Bosch, who is looking into the death of Elliott’s original defense attorney; by the end of the book, Mickey realizes he and Bosch are half-brothers. With Bosch having his own series, The Lincoln Lawyer instead introduces a new detective to the narrative.

“We knew there would be a challenge, because the part about Bosch being in these books… [they] have the same blood,” Connelly says. "We really had to invent a new character and it wouldn't have that added emotional connection of family. And so we came up with Detective Griggs.” Connelly worked with Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, who plays Griggs, on a few episodes of Bosch. “I knew what a good actor he was. When we went down that road with him, it was like, ‘This is not Bosch, but this is going to be pretty good.’”

Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in The Lincoln Lawyer.

Connelly’s involvement in the series extended beyond just recasting characters. Showrunner Ted Humphrey says that part of the conception of the Lincoln Lawyer series involved giving Connelly the chance to test out new story arcs, narratives and general material in the adaptation. 

“He feels like, in a way, it's an opportunity for him to write the books again. So, he will be the first to say, ‘Well, this didn't really work that well in the book’ or ‘I never really liked this. Why don't we do something else here?’,” Humphrey tells Tudum. “It's a great ride for even the people who are super, super familiar with the books.” There was, though, only one thing Connelly really wanted to see carried over from his novels to the show. “There's a dichotomy within Mickey that he's this killer in the courtroom and in his personal life, not so much,” Connelly says. "He wants to get his family back. He wants to stay clean and sober. He has all these things going on, but, as soon as those big wooden doors open and he enters the courtroom, he's fantastic. That's the essence of this character and these stories — I just wanted to make sure we had that.”

Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Jazz Raycole in The Lincoln Lawyer.

But with the books being told in first person, any kind of live-action retelling, naturally, needs to feel different. Connelly points to the addition of Izzy (Jazz Raycole), Mickey’s driver, as one of the show changes he’s most delighted by. “I love that character,” he gushes. “The whole idea that he's been talking to her [in the car throughout the season], and then it pays off in the last episode — that they've been heading to the prison to get an innocent guy out — I love that.”

In the end, we’re left with a cliffhanger: Mickey realizes Trevor Elliott, whom he helped escape murder charges, did kill his wife, only to be shot dead post-verdict. Mickey is able to free Jesús from jail, and, finally, seems to be at peace, ready to tackle surfing again — only for viewers to realize that he’s being watched by a mysterious figure who is suspected of being tied to Jesús’ framing. It’s a clear send up to another season, which Connelly and the team behind the series hope to tackle… but with another twist. 

“In Season 2, [we would want to] go back to book one to play out that story, which we've obviously set up at the end of Episode 10 — that will play a big part, but we will also be moving on to one of the other books in the series,” Humphrey reveals. He does, however, say that if they get another season, it won’t necessarily focus on the third book in the series, The Reversal, in which Mickey temporarily becomes a prosecutor — but that storyline may also be in the show’s future. 

Christopher Gorham and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in The Lincoln Lawyer.

As for Connelly, who’s imagined every variation of the Mickey Haller stories, he says there are a lot of directions Season 2 could go. “You see [Mickey] in a lot of different ways [in the books]: Defending himself, being a prosecutor, dealing with a lot of guilt from some of the cases he's handled and so forth. That's all great character stuff, I think,” he says. 

“At the end of the day, you can call this a legal thriller and all that, but it's really about this character: The more hours we get to explore the character, the better. I'm really looking forward to seeing how fans and viewers react to this season, and, hopefully, it will catapult us into doing more stories. I'm going to keep producing Lincoln Lawyer stories — I hope we get to tell them all.”

Stream Seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Lincoln Lawyer now.