The Lincoln Lawyer Quotes

“There is no client as scary as an innocent man."

J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“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.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“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.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top....”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“You're a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wifes and an eight-year-old daughter and we all love you.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“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.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“If you get into a game of talking to the media, you keep the story alive. Information is oxygen. Without it they die.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“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.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“That was my job. That was how it worked...very simple terms: The law was a large, rusting machine that sucked people up and lives and money. I was just a mechanic. I had become an expert at going into the machine and extracting what I needed from it in return...

Much of society thought of me as a devil but they were wrong. I was a greasy angel.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“didn’t think it was possible to be more than a mile from a Starbucks at any given point in the county, maybe even the world.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Repeat offenders mean repeat customers and McGinley was both, as many of my clients tend to be.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Your life and livelihood are on the line here, Louis. You get sent to prison and you're not going to make it. Don't worry about your mother. A mother will do what she has to do to protect her young.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“The harm is in lying to me, I said. You can lie to your mother, to Dobbs, and to your priest and to the police. But when I ask you something directly, do not lie to me. I need to operate from having facts from you. Incontrovertible facts. So when I ask you a question, tell me the truth. All the rest of the time you can say what you want and whatever makes you feel good.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“I wanted to tell him that the judge was being insensitive and probably racist.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“The thing to remember is that you don’t want clients from the cheap seats. You want the ones sitting on the fifty-yard line.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation. I didn’t deal in guilt and innocence, because everybody was guilty. Of something.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“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.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“I felt like he was another one who’d never had a shot at anything but thug life in the first place. He’d never known his father and had dropped out of school in the sixth grade”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Darius McGinley had had only one profession since age eleven, drug dealer. He’d had only one true family, a gang.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“As with many of my young male clients from the south side of the city, prison was an anticipated part of life for McGinley. He grew up knowing he was going. The only questions were when and for how long and whether he would live long enough to make it there.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“She was cremated.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Siempre culpan al abogado por ganarse la vida. Como si fuera un crimen cobrar por ganarse la vida.”
― Michael Connelly, El inocente

“Parecía mostrar una familiaridad entre la víctima y el supuesto agresor que”
― Michael Connelly, El inocente

“el cliente más aterrador que un abogado podía tener es un cliente inocente. Porque si la cagas y va a prisión”
― Michael Connelly, El inocente

“La defensa siempre tiene su turno.”
― Michael Connelly, El inocente

“I asked Lorna to read the opinion and a smile widened on my face. The summary was literally a rewrite of my brief. The three-judge panel had agreed with me right down the line on my contention that the low flyover of the sheriff’s surveillance helicopter above Casey’s ranch constituted an invasion of privacy. The court overturned Casey’s conviction, saying that the search that led to the discovery of the hydroponic pot farm was illegal.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“In my many jailhouse meetings with him over the years, I had learned that McGinley carried a personal philosophy inspired by the life and death and rap music of Tupac Shakur, the thug poet whose rhymes carried the hope and hopelessness of the desolate streets McGinley called home.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer