This article was originally published when Season 1 of The Lincoln Lawyer debuted in May 2022. It has been republished to coincide with the launch of Season 3.
While watching the Netflix legal drama The Lincoln Lawyer, a few questions may cross your mind: Is this smooth-talking, taco-eating lawyer Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) for real? And if so, is he available?
Alas, we can’t quite help with that: Mickey Haller is indeed a fictional character, created by author Michael Connelly in the popular novels that inspired the Netflix series. But, as it turns out, Connelly borrowed the idea of a lawyer working out of the back of his car from a real-life person: David Ogden, a Los Angeles attorney who passed away in 2020.
While Ogden served as the initial inspiration for Mickey Haller, he was just the start. Connelly also drew from the career of Dan Daly, a Florida-based lawyer who met the writer when they worked together at the Daytona Beach News-Journal. After leaving that job, Daly went to law school and became a defense attorney — carving out a career that has come to bear many similarities to our beloved Mickey.
“When Mike [Connelly] moved to Tampa around 2001, I think, I routinely invited him to join my partner, Roger Mills, and I for cocktails after work,” Daly tells Tudum. “Roger and I and other lawyers who joined us would tell war stories about cases we handled because that’s what lawyers do when they get together. Mike paid attention and took notes on napkins.”
Daly didn’t typically work out of his car, but he was on the clock enough that Connelly picked up a few things. “There is nothing at all absurd about working out of the back of a car,” Daly says. “I took cases in Fort Myers years ago. Although I drove myself, I listened to audio tapes of statements and recorded events, such as drug deals. I also made phone calls that I needed to make. There was very little time that wasn’t billed while I was driving.”
Occasionally, Daly’s phone rang while he was spending a day with Connelly, and the author would get a firsthand peek into the world of an on-call attorney. “Mike and I were playing golf once when the [phone] hanging off my golf bag rang,” Daly says. “I looked at the number and said I had to take the call. It was the court appointing me to a new case and scheduling a hearing.”
In our heavily connected world, this might seem like a fairly commonplace story, but in the early days of cell-phone technology, the call was a bit of a surprise. “Mike was astounded because, back then, the mountains around LA made cell reception very poor,” Daly says. “That episode, though, informed his understanding of what David Ogden told him about practicing out of the back of a Lincoln.” Daly tells us he’s watched about half of the new Lincoln Lawyer series, and he’s enjoying it. “What I am most impressed by is how accurate Mickey describes why defense lawyers do what we do.” Daly says. “Mickey says he tries to leave his client better off than when he found them. He has a hard time telling [Hayley] what clients he wouldn’t represent because everyone is entitled to competent and effective counsel. That’s how the adversarial systems [work].”
As for Daly’s current mode of transportation, it’s not quite the same as Mickey’s. “I drive a 15-year-old red Nissan Frontier with a manual transmission, a cat back, and some 229,000 miles on it,” he says. Would he consider switching over to a Lincoln? “I probably wouldn’t mind driving a Lincoln,” Daly muses. “It would likely be easier to valet than a pickup with a manual transmission.” Until then, just call him the Nissan Lawyer.
