Cliff McCormack

Cliff may have failed criminal law, but even he knows that Logan Echolls won't impress anyone with a poor-little-rich-boy routine. He prefers defending his usual stripper and biker gang clientele to representing smug and stupid rich boys like Logan. Trading slightly unethical favors with Veronica Mars and helping out the helpless tawdry like Loretta Cancun, Cliff serves the dark underbelly of Neptune. He supported Keith Mars in his failed bid to be Neptune's sheriff, even though Keith becoming sheriff might have been bad for business. Underneath that cynical exterior must lie a heart of gold.

After all, he helps Veronica and Keith trick a deadbeat dad into seeing his ex-wife when their little boy needs a bone-marrow transplant. Cliff couldn't know that said deadbeat, Steve Batando, would end up being kidnapped and forced to donate marrow, could he? He also couldn't have foreseen that he would eventually end up representing Batando or that his bungled arrest would allow him to force the soon-to-be-toast sheriff to release him. Whoops. That was totally not Cliff's fault. Anyway, also in support of the Cliff-as-a-softy theory, he brought a distraught widow and her accused-of-murder son in to the Marses for help clearing the son's name...and he actually believed the boy didn't do it! Let's face it: Cliff is a marshmallow.

Unfortunately for the new sheriff in town, Cliff remains the go-to lawyer for criminals and miscreants and Neptune, so Keith finds himself on the opposite side of the interrogation room from Cliff. Doesn't seem like so much of a softy now, does he, Keith?