After Maggie joined Mickey’s defense team in Episodes 5 & 6, The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 Episodes 7 and 8 intensify the courtroom battle. Mickey fights from behind bars while his team races to prove Alex Grant was the real killer, only to have their entire theory collapse when Grant is murdered before he can testify.
Mickey’s Return to Jail and Legal’s Funeral
Mickey wakes up in his cell haunted by hallucinations of Legal, tormented by being locked up and missing the funeral. His mother arrives from Mexico to attend the service and visits him in jail. Mickey makes the difficult decision to send Hayley back to Mexico with her grandmother, removing his daughter from the vicious bullying she’s enduring while he fights for his life.
Lorna is furious that Cisco endangered himself and refuses to seek medical treatment for his injuries. Despite the beating, Cisco managed to plant a tracker on Alex Grant’s car, allowing them to monitor his movements from a safe distance.
Mickey briefs Maggie on his complete theory: Sam and Alex were working together until Sam started cooperating with the FBI, prompting Alex to kill Sam and frame Mickey simultaneously.
Jury Selection and Opening Statements
Jury selection begins, which happens to be Dana’s specialty. Mickey has his own strategies, though. He sends Cisco and Izzy to observe potential jurors so they can make informed selections.
Knowing the prosecution can’t resist spying on the defense, Mickey deliberately marks Juror 68 as a top choice and excuses himself to the bathroom. As predicted, Dana takes the bait and uses one of her strikes to dismiss exactly the person Mickey wanted eliminated.
While imprisoned, Mickey stays safe under Bamba’s protection and spends time helping fellow inmates with legal advice. Now that his trial has started, he wants to concentrate on his own case. He meets Carter Gaines, an inmate facing identical “financial gain” murder charges, and refers him to Lorna. Carter owns a liquor store and stands accused of murdering his business partner, Gary. The key witness, a supplier named Rashad, claims he heard Carter and Gary arguing. Fifteen minutes after Carter supposedly left, someone matching Carter’s build returned wearing a pantyhose mask, demanded money from Gary, and shot him. Rashad insists the killer had Carter’s distinctive build and voice.
Lorna successfully undermines Rashad’s testimony by suggesting his memory was contaminated by the earlier argument he overheard and his knowledge of Carter’s criminal record, which predisposed him to view Carter as dangerous.
Her victory proves short lived when a security guard testifies that Gary’s final words were “Carter.” Just as the case appears hopeless, Izzy points out how suspiciously convenient that “coincidence” seems, triggering an insight in Lorna that might change everything in the next episode.
Following jury selection, opening statements are scheduled to begin, but Dana arrives visibly angry. The prosecution discovered that Mickey visited Sam’s house and instructed the landlady to dispose of his belongings. Dana accuses Mickey of destroying evidence. The irony isn’t lost on Mickey, considering what the prosecution has been doing to him throughout the case.
Mickey counters that he was completely transparent about his trip to visit Austin at Arizona State Prison. He argues that if the prosecution had conducted proper investigation, they would have found Sam’s secret residence themselves.
They proceed with opening statements. Dana delivers a lengthy argument about how Mickey murdered his client for money, believing his legal expertise would allow him to manipulate the system and escape justice. Maggie responds by reminding the jury that the defense isn’t required to prove Mickey’s innocence; the burden falls on the prosecution to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. However, even though it’s not their obligation, they will present evidence demonstrating Mickey’s complete innocence.
The main reason Cisco has been following Alex is so that when Mickey needs to subpoena him, they know where he is. But now that they actually need to serve Alex, he’s on the move. Cisco has to take Lorna’s Mini Cooper to track him down and stay under the radar.
Officer Collins Takes the Stand
The trial begins with Officer Collins lying under oath about the traffic stop. Mickey strikes back with two pieces of video evidence: the bystander footage showing Collins tossing a phone into his patrol car, and the bodycam footage capturing him receiving a text message. Collins is forced to acknowledge he possessed a burner phone, though he claims it was for conducting an extramarital affair. Even though the phone has disappeared, Collins’ credibility is completely destroyed.
Does Mickey Get Attacked in Jail?
Izzy worries that the stress of this case might trigger Mickey’s relapse, but Mickey is actively working his recovery. Even while incarcerated, he continues attending AA meetings regularly. After one AA meeting, he’s attacked and thrown into solitary confinement.
Maggie leverages this “riot” to argue the state cannot guarantee Mickey’s safety, successfully persuading the judge to transfer him to house arrest with a court appointed chaperone. The timing feels almost too convenient, raising questions about whether it was staged or genuinely coincidental.
Dana’s Courtroom Strategy
Dana calls a ballistics expert to discuss the silencer used in the murder, but Maggie forces him to concede that someone could have easily entered the garage while Mickey slept. She also discredits a disgruntled former employee who claimed Mickey threatened Sam. Mickey and Maggie can’t understand why Dana is wasting time with these peripheral witnesses instead of calling Drucker, but they discover the reason soon enough.
Drucker testifies about the letter stating Mickey would collect his money from Sam’s fund “by any means necessary.” When Mickey cross examines him, he walks straight into a trap Dana carefully constructed.
He first establishes that he voluntarily brought investigators to his storage facility and opened the locks for them, which is how they obtained the letter initially. If he had something to hide, why would he have cooperated so completely? In hindsight, it’s suspicious how they seemed to know exactly what they were looking for. Mickey triggers the trap when he questions why they only found a letter. He unknowingly creates an opening for Dana to introduce a second motive they hadn’t disclosed in discovery. Sam had created a fraudulent website using Mickey’s name as a co signer, which they discovered during the search. The prosecution now argues Mickey killed Sam to protect his professional reputation. Mickey’s attempt to recover by claiming he reported Sam’s debt on his tax returns isn’t enough to contain the damage.
Does Alex Grant Die in The Lincoln Lawyer?
The team desperately needs Alex Grant to testify as an alternative suspect. Cisco tracks him to a hotel, but Grant’s girlfriend, disguised as room service, smuggles Alex out in a laundry cart right past Cisco’s surveillance. He eventually catches up and serves the subpoena, but he notices Grant doesn’t seem concerned about the legal threat.
Cisco realizes too late that Grant wasn’t fleeing from legal consequences. He was running from professional assassins. The “bodyguards” who beat Cisco earlier were actually a hit squad. Before Cisco can intervene, Alex Grant is thrown from an upper floor window, landing on a car below and dying instantly. The defense’s primary alternative suspect is eliminated.
The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 Episodes 7 & 8: What’s Next?
Alex Grant’s murder completely dismantles Mickey’s defense strategy. Their entire theory depended on presenting Grant as the real killer with motive, means, and opportunity. Without Grant alive to testify or face questioning, the defense loses its most compelling alternative narrative.
The assassination raises urgent questions about who wanted Grant dead and why the timing coincided so perfectly with the subpoena. If Grant was running from professional killers rather than the legal system, it suggests he was involved in something far more dangerous than Mickey realized. The hit also implies someone powerful wanted to ensure Grant could never testify about what he knew.
Dana’s surprise revelation about the fraudulent website using Mickey’s name creates a second viable motive that the defense wasn’t prepared to counter. The prosecution now has two independent theories for why Mickey would kill Sam: financial gain and reputation protection. Fighting both simultaneously makes Mickey’s defense significantly more complicated.
Officer Collins’ destroyed credibility helps establish that the arrest was orchestrated, but without Grant to identify who orchestrated it, that evidence only goes so far. The burner phone proves Collins received outside instructions, but it doesn’t prove who sent them or that Mickey was deliberately framed.
Lorna’s epiphany about Carter’s case might provide insight applicable to Mickey’s situation. If she’s discovered a pattern or strategy that worked in Carter’s defense, it could translate to Mickey’s trial.
Mickey’s transfer to house arrest gives him better access to his legal team and removes him from immediate physical danger, but it also eliminates any sympathy the jury might have had about him being forced to defend himself from jail. The attack that prompted the transfer raises questions about whether it was genuinely random violence or another element of the conspiracy against him.
With their star witness dead, the fraudulent website revealed, and the prosecution building a stronger case than anticipated, Mickey and Maggie need to fundamentally rethink their defense strategy. They’re running out of alternative suspects, running out of time, and running out of options to prove Mickey’s innocence beyond simply creating reasonable doubt.
