The proving ground

Mickey Haller, known as the Lincoln Lawyer, has spent his career in criminal court. Now he takes on his first civil lawsuit, and he treats it as he would a murder trial.

The case concerns a sixteen-year-old boy who killed his ex-girlfriend after an AI company's chatbot urged him to do it. Haller must prove that the company understood the dangers of what it had built and released it anyway.

For help he turns to Jack McEvoy, a journalist who understands how powerful this technology is about to become. Working together, the two men track down a whistleblower who is living in hiding.

The tech companies respond by trying to buy off or bully the people against them. As that pressure builds, the size of the fight becomes plain: billions of dollars ride on the verdict, and so do countless lives. It is a legal thriller set in a courtroom, with a single all-or-nothing case at its center.