Goofs

The recording of Darby's phone call does not match the actual conversation.

Gray tells Smith, his boss, that he's staying at the Marbury hotel in room 833. When he enters his hotel room with his room key, he's entering room 237.

When Darby flees from the scene of Thomas's murder and first enters the hotel room where she's going to hide, you can see the imprint of someone who has been sitting on the foot of the bed (presumably Julia Roberts from the previous shoot of the scene).

Julia Roberts plays Darby , an unmarried law student but towards the end of the film she's wearing a wedding ring, Julia's own from husband Lyle Lovett.

When Darby Shaw and Thomas Callahan are in class Darby's hair changes between shots.

Justice Jensen is killed by Khamel using a rope to strangle him. It takes him no more than a second to kill him. It seems highly unlikely that one could strangle a person in just one second. However, the strangulation is not shown, but judging by Khamel's quick yank and the sound Jensen made, it seems likely that he successfully dislocated or crushed a vertebra in his neck, which would quickly cause suffocation.

Darby and Gray are in the car after retrieving the video tape from the bank and are being watched by the villain that planted the bomb. After Darby senses the car bomb, they go on the run and rapidly climb up several levels in the parking garage. As they emerge from the staircase the villain that watched them from several levels below, comes racing toward them from the garage level above. It would be impossible to move a car around the garage fast enough to get above them.

(At about 6 min) Khamel is seen driving to Washington in a truck. In an overhead shot, he can be seen driving over the Arlington Memorial Bridge in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Once he reaches the roundabout instead of driving to the right, he continues to drive left, which appears to be heading into oncoming traffic. However, upon closer inspection, it is clear there are two lanes in each direction, and it is possible to turn left at this point and continue on Lincoln Memorial Circle.

In the videotape the oil and gas lawyer Curtis Morgan leaves for his wife, he says that he lifted an incriminating memo from the desk of a lawyer at White and Blazovitch dated September 28th. But when Gray Grantham calls around confirming the facts before running the story on the memo, he says it was dated April 11th.

As the camera panes over the dead body of Chief Justice Rosenberg, he is still breathing.

When Darby is finished with the safe deposit box, she closes and locks its door with her key, removes the key, and leaves the vault. But safe deposit boxes cannot be locked or unlocked with only one key. Two keys are needed. Darby's key would have to be paired with a bank's master key. Usually a bank teller is present to do the 2-key locking procedure.

When Darby enters the elevator in the hotel, the sign on the side of the elevator clearly states she is on the 20th floor, but when the floors descend inside the elevator as the numbers light up as the floors go down, the highest number in the elevator is seen to be 19, as seen inside. Even if the 13th floor is not listed and is usually skipped as it is bad luck , there would be a 20th floor even if 19 is shown, however this elevator shows a 13th floor.

When Stump is chasing Gray and Darby with a car in the parking garage, while they are on foot, he fails to gain significant ground on them despite seemingly flooring the car and reaching a speed fast enough for the car to explode upon impact, although he hit the car in which he had planted the bomb.

Jake Weber, who portrayed Curtis "Garcia" Morgan, is mistakenly credited as Charles Morgan. He is repeatedly referred to as Curtis Morgan, in particular when Darby goes to his firm to try to see him for an appointment. In fact, the student in the rehab center remembered his last name but did not remember his first name, and said his first name was "something like Charles, but that's not it."

The plot line of the film revolves around the notion that a conservative president in the wake of the Supreme Court justices assassinations will appoint two conservative justices who will in theory vote in favor of Victor Mattiece being able to drill for his oil in the Louisiana Bayou. However, there is a major flaw in this theory. If Mattiece assassinated the two justices there is no way of knowing if the conservative justices appointed will be nature lovers. The film tries to make the assumption that a conservative justice would be anti-environment but clearly that is flawed thinking as assassinated Justices Jensen, a staunch conservative, was also an environmentalist. While it's a certain that the president will appoint two conservatives to the bench Mattiece has no way of knowing if they will be for or against the environment. The film also makes it clear that the president was in no way aware of Mattiece's intentions to assassinate the justices and seemingly out of the loop as to his drilling problems until the Pelican Brief is written. In fact once it's clear that the Pelican Brief might become public knowledge, the President is advised by Fletcher Coal to make sure that whoever he nominates to the court is a nature lover as a way of assuring the public that the president was in no way aware or involved with Mattiece's plan. Thus is Mattiece's plan at best was a crap shoot.

In every scene when Gray is speaking on the phone, land lines at that time, he has the bottom part of the phone pressed up against the bottom of his chin. The party of the other end of the line would not be able to hear him.

When Gray is replaying the Pelican Brief recording, at the end he turns off the recorder according to the sound of Darby not talking anymore. The recorder button is already shown as off and he pushes the play button. This shot should have been shown at the beginning of his recap.

The scene where Darby enters a bar while fleeing a possible assassin and ends up in a conversation with him while sitting on a dryer is filmed at Checkpoint Charlies in New Orleans. When she runs out of the front door she is on Bourbon Street, approximately fourteen blocks away. Also, they have people blowing fire from a procession (second line). This would never happen as open flames are highly illegal in the French Quarter and are never a part of a second line parade.

Gavin Verheek tells Darby by phone that he is staying at the Westin, by the river. Darby later tells him to take the trolley to a place called the Riverwalk. In reality, the Westin was approximately 1 block from the Riverwalk. The nearest stop to the Westin where Gavin could have caught the riverside trolley (streetcar) was at the Riverwalk.

When Stump chases Darby Shaw through Bourbon Street he ends up punching someone and dragged into a biker bar, in the following scene, Stump he has no signs of being in any altercation.

After Gray finishes taking pictures of "Garcia" through the open window of his car, he puts the camera down on the front seat and gets out of the car to follow "Garcia", but he doesn't wind the window up, leaving his expensive camera at the mercy of any casual thief.

Darby goes to meet Morgan at his office putting herself in an unnecessary situation. She could have just called up the office and made an appointment as Ms Blythe. They would have then told her he had died. By just showing up saying she made an appointment when she didn't created their suspicion of her. Even if he had been alive this would have made her being there seem legit.

Darby tells Gavin Verheek to meet her at the New Orleans riverfront by taking the trolley. However, true New Orleans, as Darby is, never use the term trolley but rather streetcar.