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. (However, in chapter 19 of The Black Ice, Bosch mentions there was one unnamed half-brother. Bosch notes that the half-brother is a defense attorney and “probably born a few years ahead of Bosch”.) The elder Michael Haller was one of Los Angeles' premier criminal defense attorneys and his clients included mobster Mickey Cohen and one of the Manson girls.

J. Michael Haller Jr. was born from his father's second marriage. His parents wed less than two months after his father divorced his first wife, and the Haller son was born five months later, into a family of wealth. Haller's mother was much younger than his father and was from Mexico, where she was a famous actress. In The Fifth Witness, Haller says that he looks "more south of the border than north". Little is known of Haller's childhood other than his father died when the boy was young (shortly after the meeting with Bosch) and his inheritance of his father's Colt Woodsman pistol, mentioned in The Lincoln Lawyer (2005), the first of the series. Haller grew up with his mother and was bilingual. He followed in his father's footsteps by 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.

The Mickey Haller novels are narrated almost exclusively in the first-person by Mickey Haller. The second novel featuring Mickey Haller, The Reversal (2010), could be considered a crossover novel, as it contains both Harry Bosch-centered chapters, narrated in the third person (including third-person scenes featuring Mickey Haller) and Mickey Haller-centered chapters, narrated in the first person.

All but two of the Harry Bosch novels are narrated in the third-person. (Both Lost Light (2003) and The Narrows (2004) are narrated in the first person by the temporarily retired Harry Bosch.) Although The Crossing (2015) features appearances by Mickey Haller, it is classified as a Harry Bosch novel because it is narrated entirely in the third person.

As of 2020, there are six novels in The Lincoln Lawyer series. The latest is The Law of Innocence (2020), which is narrated from Haller's point of view. In 2023, a seventh was published, titled Resurrection Walk.

Personal life

Haller has been married and divorced twice. He was first married to Maggie McPherson, a lawyer and prosecutor, and they have a daughter Hayley. McPherson is a career prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, and is nicknamed "McFierce" by defense lawyers. They divorced due to their opposite careers—Haller was defending accused criminals, while McPherson was prosecuting them. They continue to maintain a close relationship, with periodic reconciliations.

Haller next married Lorna Taylor. She became Haller's Case Manager. She married again, to Haller's investigator, Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski. Haller maintains good relationships with both of his ex-wives and has joint custody of his daughter, who grew up speaking Spanish as well as English. In The Brass Verdict, Haller is revealed to have visitation of his daughter on Wednesday nights and alternate weekends. By the events of The Fifth Witness, however, Haller says 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. Haller had nicknamed him "Mish" after learning 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. The gang had nicknamed him after the Cisco Kid, an outlaw-adventurer Wild West character created by O. Henry in 1907. Cisco 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 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 hired an associate, Jennifer "Bullocks" Aronson, a new graduate of Southwestern Law School. This is located in the former department store Bullocks Wilshire.

In Nine Dragons, Haller makes a short cameo as Harry Bosch's lawyer. He later suggests that their daughters (Mickey's Hayley and Harry's Maddie) should get together. They later meet during the events of The Reversal. The book also refers to the movie adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey.

Haller has moral qualms about representing the guilty, and his concerns are a constant theme in the series. Twice he 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. At the beginning of The Gods of Guilt, however, it is revealed that his campaign turned into disaster when the client whom he got acquitted for drunk driving, gets drunk, drives, and kills a mother and her daughter. The girl was a classmate of Haller's daughter and she blames her father for the death, refusing to talk to him for most of the book.

Novels

Short stories

• "The Perfect Triangle", in The Dark End of the Street (2010)
• "Burnt Matches", in "The Highway Kind: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drives and Dark Roads" (Oct 2016)

Box office performance