Kennedy is a quick-witted, resourceful criminal lawyer. He is also garrulous, short-tempered, and as foul-mouthed as his clients, who are a gallery of those Boston rogues that Mr. Higgins can always make fine company in print although in real life nobody would willingly have one of them on the premises. With no formal plot, [Kennedy for the Defense] consists of a series of episodes which the wily Kennedy finds ways to combine advantageously. Backstage legal maneuvering is what this affair is really all about.

Phoebe-Lou Adams, "Life & Letters: 'Kennedy for the Defense'," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1980, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 245, No. 3, March, 1980, p. 102.