The Lincoln Lawyer – Picture: Netflix
The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 is now up on Netflix, and given the ending, we’re thankful to report that more of the series is on the way. A lot is already known about the show’s upcoming season, including filming dates now set. Here’s our preview of everything we know so far about The Lincoln Lawyer season 3.
Released in July and August 2023 across two volumes, season 2 of The Lincoln Lawyer adapted The Fifth Witness (with some key differences), seeing the return of Manuel Garcia-Rulfo plus the addition of some new faces such as Lana Parrilla playing the role of Lisa Trammell.
Has The Lincoln Lawyer been Renewed for Season 3?
Official Renewal Status: Renewed on August 30th
On August 30th, Netflix confirmed that the show had been given a third-season renewal.
Ahead of its official renewal, we heard rumblings of a third season for The Lincoln Lawyer season 3 ahead of volume 2 releasing with early plans drawn up for an additional season ahead of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes from May through November 2023.
Season 3 will again consist of 10 episodes and will be based on the fifth book in The Lincoln Lawyer series by Michael Connelly, The Gods of Guilt.
Neve Campbell, who plays Maggie McPherson on the show, won’t return in any capacity for the new season. Her character (spoiler alert) has moved to San Diego in the show so may only feature henceforth with text messages or mentions by Mickey’s daughter.
Ted Humphrey and Dailyn Rodriguez (showrunners on the series) said on the renewal:
“The audience response to the show has been so gratifying and wonderful, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to dive back into Michael Connelly’s universe and bring Mickey Haller and his world to the screen again.”
Peter Friedlander, Vice President of Scripted Series, Netflix, US and Canada said:
“We’re thrilled to bring back The Lincoln Lawyer for a third season. Ted Humphrey and Dailyn Rodriguez have taken us deeper into Mickey Haller’s world, building out characters and stories that have connected with our global audience, and we look forward to seeing what they have in store for everyone’s favorite lawyer. The show continues to top our global lists and it’s a testament to the work from a creative powerhouse team including Michael Connelly, David E. Kelley, Ross Fineman and our partners at A+E Studios.”
What did various team members behind the show say ahead of renewal?
The NYTimes spoke to the showrunner Ted Humphrey, who confirmed that a writer’s room for the third season had been established before the WGA strike beginning on May 1st, 2023.
Humphrey, when asked what’s next for the show, told them:
“Right now it depends not only on how Season 2 does, but also on the resolution of the strikes. We had to shut down our writers’ room for Season 3 when the Writers Guild contract expired. We’ve done Michael Connelly picket events where Michael and the staff from “The Lincoln Lawyer” and “Bosch” have picketed together. We’re out there because the issues are real and have to be resolved, and the only way that’s going to happen is by the companies sitting back down with us to make a fair deal. Hopefully that happens soon, and once it does, we will be back to work on a third season.”
Indeed, a WGA listing currently appears for The Lincoln Lawyer season 3, once again suggesting that the show was headed for renewal ahead of the strike.
Had the show been released a little earlier in the year, we’d have likely seen it given an early renewal order afforded to The Diplomat, FUBAR, and others.
In conclusion, it looks like The Lincoln Lawyer is eying up a renewal, assuming it can hit internal Netflix targets (not available to Joe public) and the strikes come to a resolution soon.
Picture: Netflix
How well did The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 perform on Netflix?
Thanks to several sources, we can see exactly how well The Lincoln Lawyer performed on Netflix.
Netflix Top 10s
Sourced from Netflix’s top 10 site every Tuesday, we can get a weekly snapshot of how many hours were watched globally and how many completed viewing equivalents (CVE for short) were done.
Unlike most shows where we can tell pretty quickly how well they’re doing, sadly, season 2 of The Lincoln Lawyer isn’t quite like that. That’s because the season was split, and when volume 2 comes out, all viewing stats that Netflix releases are muddied together within season 2 (Netflix does not split volumes 1 and 2 seperately.
As a result, here’s what the hourly breakdown looks like as of August 20th:
| Week Period | Hours Viewed(M) | Rank | Week in Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 2nd, 2023 to July 9th, 2023 | 31,400,000 | 2 | 1 |
| July 9th, 2023 to July 16th, 2023 | 35,300,000 (+12%) | 1 | 2 |
| July 16th, 2023 to July 23rd, 2023 | 19,400,000 (-45%) | 2 | 3 |
| July 23rd, 2023 to July 30th, 2023 | 12,600,000 (-35%) | 4 | 4 |
| July 30th, 2023 to August 6th, 2023 | 55,200,000 (+338%) | 1 | 5 |
| August 6th, 2023 to August 13th, 2023 | 42,400,000 (-23%) | 2 | 6 |
| August 13th, 2023 to August 20th, 2023 | 23,500,000 (-45%) | 5 | 7 |
| August 20th, 2023 to August 27th, 2023 | 15,300,000 (-35%) | 8 | 8 |
Given season 2 only launched with five episodes and the remaining 5 in early August, it’s hard to directly compare with season 1, which had a huge week 2 and 3 (108.09 million and 64.2 million hours watched, respectively).
Raw Top 10 Data from FlixPatrol
Digging into the daily top 10s with the help of FlixPatrol, which tracks 89 countries, we can see how many points the show was managing to pick up daily and where the show performed best in the daily Netflix top 10s.
Their data suggests the show peaked as the number 2 show during the first month, dropping to the 10th most popular just a few days before volume 2 was released.
Their heatmap suggests the show is most popular in the Nordics, the United Kingdom and Ireland, the US, Canada, and Central Europe.
Heatmap of popularity in Netflix top 10s for The Lincoln Lawyer and number of points graph
Nielsen Stats for The Lincoln Lawyer
Nielsen is a great source for viewership. However, there are several pitfalls. Firstly, they only measure the United States. Secondly, they only measure connected televisions, and thirdly, for non-paying subscribers, you have to wait around a month for data.
Per a press release from the audience measurement company:
“The Netflix original series The Lincoln Lawyer had a very successful week (#2 overall, #1 Original) after releasing episodes 1-5 of Season 2 on Thursday of this interval and drawing 1.4 billion viewing minutes across its 15 episodes. For context, after releasing all 10 episodes of Season 1 during the week of May 9-15, 2022, The Lincoln Lawyer drew 884 million minutes in its first three days of availability. The legal drama series seems to have kept its same audience profile, though, as two-thirds of its viewers were 50+ in both seasonal debut weeks.”
This suggests that The Lincoln Lawyer returned strong in the United States, but for season 1, its second, third, and fourth weeks were the show’s most vital.
External Demand for The Lincoln Lawyer
Google Trends is particularly interesting for split releases as you can see whether the interest sustains in the weeks between the two releases and whether volume 2 is softer than volume 1 when it does return.
Data thus far shows that The Lincoln Lawyer Volume 2 managed to keep the level of attention between its two volumes.
Google Trends for The Lincoln Lawyer worldwide
When will The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 be in Production? Netflix Release Date?
When the series was first renewed, it was unclear where production was. Given the renewal, we suspect scripts were in development ahead of the May 2023 WGA stoppage.
In mid-November 2023, following the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, we learned that The Lincoln Lawyer would be one of the first returning Netflix Originals to get back into production in January 2024.
The current plan is for filming to start in early January 2024 and then run for five months, wrapping sometime in late May 2024.
The budget for the series is reportedly somewhere between $3 and $5 million an episode, and it will continue to be filmed in the Los Angeles area.
What does all this mean for a release date? We can expect the show to return to our screens as soon as possible in late 2024 or, perhaps more realistically, in early 2025.
What to expect from The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Season 2, Episode 10 results in Mickey Haller winning one of his most challenging cases to date, with Lisa’s case finally ending. Although Lisa got a Not Guilty verdict, we’re presuming that she did get arrested for the murder of her ex-husband. Mickey now meets with a new client, which seems to set up the plot for season 3 with the lawyer identifying Gloria Dayton (aka Glory Days), who has been murdered.
TV Insider confirmed the book that will be covered in the third season of The Lincoln Lawyer. Should the show get renewed, the showrunner unveiled to them that Michael Connelly’s The Gods of Guilt would be the basis of the third season.
To recap how the book series has been adapted in order thus far:
- The Lincoln Lawyer (2005)
- The Brass Verdict (2008) – adapted in season 1
- The Reversal (2010)
- The Fifth Witness (2011) – adapted in season 2
- The Gods of Guilt (2013) – to be adapted in season 3
- The Law of Innocence (2020)
- Resurrection Walk (2023)
Per GoodReads, here’s a rundown of the fifth The Lincoln Lawyer book entry:
“Mickey Haller gets the text, “Call me ASAP – 187,” and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game.
When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.
Haunted by the ghosts of his past, Mickey must work tirelessly and bring all his skill to bear on a case that could mean his ultimate redemption or proof of his ultimate guilt.”
Book cover for The Gods of Guilt with Netflix sticker.
Finally, you may have seen that we reported that the first season will soon be released in a Blu-ray boxset, with having released in mid-August 2023.
Do you want to see The Lincoln Lawyer return for a third season? Let us know in the comments below.