Perry Mason is a criminal defense attorney who specializes in defending seemingly indefensible and unwinnable cases.
Perry Erle Mason was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His father was an airline pilot and former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot, while his mother was a social worker.
After Mason graduated from high school, he went on to the University of California, Los Angeles. Upon graduating from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, he went on to Stanford Law School. In his second year of law school, Mason was accepted into the United States Marine Corps's Platoon Leaders Class and attended a ten-week training session at Officer Candidates School the summer before his third year. Afterwards, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and placed on inactive duty status to finish earning his law degree.
Upon graduating from Stanford Law and passing the California Bar Examination, Mason attended The Basic School. After The Basic School, he went on to The Naval Justice School in Newport, Rhode Island. Afterwards, Mason was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar as a legal assistance attorney. He later served as a defense counsel at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Mason left the Marine Corps after four years of active duty service following law school. He then returned to Los Angeles, where he found employment with a prestigious downtown law firm as an associate.
Mason later left the firm and set up his own solo law practice specializing in criminal defense. Soon after, he hired a young woman named Della Street as his secretary and a former police officer named Paul Drake as his law practice's investigator.
As a defense attorney, Mason is specifically known for taking on cases where the evidence all leads to his client, but ones where he believes that the client is innocent in spite of the evidence. The cases that he accepts are also based upon his curiosity regarding the problem that the client is facing. Quite often, the clients and even law enforcement officers regard Mason as a better detective, as he entails every minute detail of the crime so as to get to the bottom and solve the mystery.
With the aid of Della Street and Paul Drake, he often finds that by digging deeply into the facts, startling facts can be revealed. Relying on surprise witnesses and his outstanding courtroom skills displayed by his stern cross-examinations, Mason often tricks or traps people into unwittingly admitting their guilt.
A frequently foe in his cases is assistant district attorney Hamilton Burger.