Faces to Watch in ’96 :...

May it please the court: Matthew McConaughey will speak for the defense.

The 26-year-old Texas native, discovered by filmmaker Richard Linklater in 1993’s nostalgia trip “Dazed and Confused,” has steadily worked his way toward leading-man status.

Last year saw him as a by-the-book cop named Abe Lincoln in “Boys on the Side” and, somewhat less memorably, as a homicidal tow-truck driver in “The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Now he’s poised for stardom with “A Time to Kill,” the latest John Grisham legal thriller that just wrapped in Mississippi. Starring opposite Sandra Bullock and Samuel L. Jackson, McConaughey plays a young Southern lawyer who defends a black man charged with murder. (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” anyone?)

Word is that author Grisham and director Joel Schumacher were mightily impressed with McConaughey, who beat out a number of established stars for the role.

Your witness, counselor.