Mickey Haller

Michael "Mickey" Haller, Junior is a fictional character created by Michael Connelly in the 2005 novel The Lincoln Lawyer. Haller, a Los Angeles-based defense attorney, is the paternal half-brother of Connelly's best-known character, LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. The Mickey Haller series consists of four published novels, with the most recent published in April 2011.

A film adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller, was released in spring 2011.^[1]

Fictional character biography

Background

Haller is significantly younger than his half-brother, Bosch. When Bosch first met his father, Michael Haller Sr., Bosch was an adult but Mickey was only five years old. The elder Michael Haller was a famous defense attorney in the Los Angeles area. Haller's mother was born in Mexico, and in The Fifth Witness, Haller himself says that he looks "more south of the border than north." Little is known of Haller's childhood other than the death of his father (which occurred shortly after the meeting with Bosch) and his inheritance of his father's Colt Woodsman pistol, mentioned in The Lincoln Lawyer. Haller followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a defense attorney. Most of Haller's knowledge of his father comes from law books he has read and stories from judges and other lawyers who had worked with the elder Haller prior to his death.

Personal life

Haller has been married and divorced twice, once to Maggie McPherson and once to Lorna Taylor. McPherson, nicknamed "McFierce" by defense lawyers, is a career prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, with whom he has a daughter, Hayley, now 14. They divorced due to their careers being opposite each others—Haller was defending accused criminals, while McPherson was prosecuting them—although they have continued to maintain a close relationship with periodic reconciliations. Taylor is currently Haller's office secretary and is married to Haller's current investigator, Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski. Haller maintains good relationships with both of his ex-wives and has joint custody of his daughter. In The Brass Verdict, Haller is revealed to have custody of his daughter on Wednesdays nights and alternate weekends. By the events of the The Fifth Witness, however, Haller reveals that is only the "official arrangement" and he sees his daughter far more frequently.

During the series Haller has used two private investigators for his trials. The first, Raul "Mish" Levin was murdered during the events of The Lincoln Lawyer, his nickname "Mish" was bestowed upon him by Haller after Haller learned of his "mish-mash" of Mexican-Jewish ancestry. His second investigator, Wojciechowski, was formerly a member of the motorcycle gang The Road Saints, whom Haller frequently represented, and was nicknamed by the gang after the Cisco Kid. He was introduced in The Brass Verdict.

Haller was nicknamed "the Lincoln Lawyer" because of his preference for working out of his Lincoln Town Car instead of in an office. However, during The Fifth Witness, Haller temporarily rents an office on a one-year lease. With the influx in foreclosure clients at that time, Haller has hired an associate, Jennifer "Bullocks" Aronson, a new graduate of Southwestern Law School, which is located in the former Bullocks Wilshire.

In 9 Dragons, Haller makes a short cameo as Harry Bosch's lawyer; a murder suspect even states that Matthew McConaughey was his alibi. He later suggests that their daughters (Harry's Maddie and Mickey's Hayley) should get together; their daughters would later meet during the events of The Reversal. Later on in the book, a reference is made to the movie adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey.

Haller's discomfort with representing the guilty is a constant theme in the series, and he has twice attempted to move to the prosecution side. In The Reversal, Haller is appointed as a special prosecutor to overturn the exoneration of Jason Jessup, a convicted child-murderer who was freed after DNA evidence cleared him of wrongdoing. Haller teams up with McPherson and Bosch to retry Jessup. At the end of The Fifth Witness, Haller files to run for Los Angeles County district attorney, with McPherson's support.

Novel series

Novel	Role	Partner and associates	Client
The Lincoln Lawyer (2005)	Defense Attorney	Lorna Taylor (secretary), Raul Levin (private investigator)	Louis Roulet; accused rapist and murderer
The Brass Verdict (2008)	Defense Attorney	Harry Bosch (police investigation), Lorna Taylor (secretary), Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski (private investigator)	Walter Elliot; accused murderer
The Reversal (2010)	Prosecutor	Maggie McPherson (2nd Chair), Harry Bosch (lead investigator)	Special prosecutor of Jason Jessup (accused child-murder)
The Fifth Witness (2011)	Defense Attorney	Jennifer "Bullocks" Aronson (2nd Chair), Lorna Taylor (secretary), Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski (private investigator)	Lisa Trammel; accused murderer

Film series

Box office performance

Film	Release date		Box office revenue			Budget	Profit	Reference
	Worldwide	United States	Domestic	Foreign	Worldwide
The Lincoln Lawyer	March 18, 2011	March 18, 2011	$57,365,000	$17,000,000	$74,365,000	$40,000,000	$34,365,000	[2]

References

1. ^ Official announcement of The Lincoln Lawyer movie adaptation on Connelly's website
2. ^ "The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lincolnlawyer.htm. Retrieved 2011-05-11.