Before you can start to check your packages with Lintian, you'll have to install the lintian Debian package.
Alternatively you can checkout Lintian from the source repository and use that directly. By setting LINTIAN_ROOT (or using the --root option) lintian can be run from the source directory as if it had been installed on your system.
The only known caveat of using Lintian from the source directory is that Lintian requires a C.UTF-8 (or en_US.UTF-8) locale to correctly process some files. The lintian Debian package will set up this locale during installation.