Summa cum laude is Latin for "with highest honor," and it is awarded to college students earning either a bachelor's or master's degree who graduate in the top 5 percent of their class. Order of the Coif is an honor society for United States law school graduates. In order to be eligible for membership, a law student must have earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence (one of several types of Doctor of Law degrees) and must have graduated in the top 10 percent of their class. In the United States, a "law review" is a legal journal written and edited by an organization of students at a law school. To be appointed to a law review organization is considered a high honor, as only the best and brightest law students are chosen to write and edit articles for publication.
Blast from the past: while investigating their case, Eames, Goren, and Captain Deakins meet in a restaurant with an old friend of Deakins' named "Mack" McNeil, played by Dan Frazer. This is the same actor in a similar role that he played back in the 1970s on the police drama Kojak (1973). Frazer played Lt. Theo Kojak's boss Captain Frank McNeil.
Vincent D'Onofrio and Bruce MacVittie both guest-starred on the "Homicide: Life on the Street" episode The Subway (1997). MacVittie's character murdered D'Onofrio's by pushing him under a subway train.