Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Netflix’s legal drama series, ‘The Lincoln Lawyer,’ focuses on the trial of Lisa Trammell, the chef and owner of a restaurant named Elysian. She is accused of murdering a man named Mitchell Bondurant. All the evidence unearthed in the investigation points towards Lisa as the culprit, but she maintains her innocence and gets Mickey Haller to represent her in court. They already knew each other before she was charged with murder, which makes Haller all the more concerned about her safety and future, and he does everything in his power to prevent her from going to prison.
Throughout the trial, Haller and Lisa ask each other to trust one another. While Haller asks for her trust because his process can sometimes come off as counterintuitive, Lisa asks for his trust because she thinks he doesn’t believe she is innocent. Haller tries to believe her but cannot shake off the feeling that suggests there is something weird about the whole thing. Ultimately, the truth comes to light, and Haller is appalled to discover that Lisa is not who he thought she was. Here’s everything you need to know about her. SPOILERS AHEAD
Did Lisa Kill Her Husband?
Lisa owned and ran Elysian by herself. She had put years of hard work and dedication into it, so it made sense that she didn’t want to give it up for anything. Mitchell Bondurant wanted her and others in the community to sell their places so he could go forward with a new project there. He offered millions in return for this, and some people took the offer, but others, like Lisa, were not ready to give up one inch of their place.
At first, Haller thought Lisa was reluctant to sell the place because she was against gentrification and didn’t want to give up the restaurant she’d worked so hard to build. Eventually, however, it turns out that her intentions are driven by something entirely different, and it has to do with her husband, who has not been seen in years. He first mentioned when Lisa tells Haller that she used to be married, and technically still is, because they never got a divorce. She and her husband started the restaurant together, but when things got tough, he walked out on her and was never seen again. The last she heard, he was somewhere in Mexico.
Haller tells Lisa to call her husband and ask him to testify for her, especially regarding the missing hammer, which might have been used as the murder weapon. It is the only thing missing from the tool kit the cops found in her garage, giving weight to the prosecution’s argument. Even though it could work in her favor, Lisa doesn’t seem too keen about calling her ex. Haller also notices that she gets agitated whenever someone brings up Jeff.
Haller gets Jeff’s number from Lisa and talks to him over the phone. Jeff remains elusive but eventually shows up one day and asks for money in return for his testimony. Haller doesn’t agree to it and resorts to other methods to get a not-guilty verdict for Lisa. Later, however, while walking around the city with his daughter, Haller notices that the surrounding sounds are similar to what he’d heard in the background while talking to Jeff over the phone. He wonders if Jeff had been in LA this whole time. He asks Cisco to look into it, and that’s when the full picture emerges.
It turns out that the Jeff that Haller talked to over the phone and met in person was an out-of-work actor who used to work at Lisa’s restaurant. His photo is found on a Facebook post made years ago by another employee. Haller also discovers that the divorce papers were filed, but Lisa never signed them. According to the state laws, once divorced, Jeff would get half of the restaurant, and Lisa wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. If the divorce was so profitable for him, why would he walk away from it? Why would he leave everything and disappear without a trace?
Haller confronts Lisa about it, but she doesn’t give a direct answer. When he asks her where Jeff is, her eyes turn to the garden, and Haller realizes Jeff has been dead all along. Lisa couldn’t afford to lose the restaurant to her husband, so she killed him and buried him in the backyard. This is also why she couldn’t sell the restaurant, even when she was offered millions for it. The dead body would be found if construction began here, and her secret would be outed. This is why she fought so hard to keep the restaurant, but the truth comes out in the end, and she has to face the consequences of her actions.
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