When Amy is transferred to criminal court, Bruce stays behind in juvenile court, and she inherits Spencer, an insolent clerk; Lauren has an extremely unhappy first day at junior high, but things brighten up on day two when, much to her mother's dismay, she finds a boyfriend who is a year older; after accepting Stuart's proposal, Amy begins to have nightmares about the wedding; recently unemployed as a result of budget cuts, Donna helps Peter care for his sons while Gillian languishes in a coma; Ellen, D.C.F.'s newest employee, uses her experience as a former foster child to help Maxine deal with a teenager who's run away from her foster home; fed up with his impudence and disloyalty, Amy fires Spencer and hires Donna, who's recently graduated from law school; Amy's predecessor in the criminal division threatens her with retribution after she considers overturning his decision to suppress evidence in a capital murder case; Gillian finally emerges from her coma.

After she's released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, Gillian reveals that she had a near-death experience during Walt's delivery, but can't seem to find anyone who believes her; when Amy claims that she has no time to organize the wedding, Stu volunteers to make all the arrangements; tragedy occurs when Maxine's pleas to the police to publicize the disappearance of a foster child fall on deaf ears; it's apparent that there's no love lost between Stu and David when they end up at the same cocktail party; Kyle and Lily have an intense encounter in a hospital elevator; Amy's frustration with the difference between the criminal and juvenile court systems increases as the Hawkins trial concludes; Kyle is unsuccessful in his attempt to get Lily to change her mind about moving to New York.

In court for the sentencing phase of a capital murder trial, Amy must decide whether to stop the proceedings when one of the lawyers makes inappropriate remarks in the course of his closing argument. In a private dinner with Lauren, Stu reveals a hitherto hidden fear of children. Kyle feels awkward on meeting his new boss, who he discovers he already knows from an AA meeting.

Forced to substitute for an ailing colleague just two days before her wedding, Amy presides over a felony murder case involving a 14 year old boy and makes a controversial decision to overturn the jury's verdict; Stu's groomsmen are less than thrilled when they realize that they'll be wearing kilts instead of tuxes at the wedding; Kyle hatches a plan to surprise the rest of the family with Vincent's presence at the wedding, and gets a surprise himself when he walks in on Vincent and Heather making out; Amy forgets to get a sub as the judge on call, and ends up signing one warrant after another for David; Maxine's search for an apartment goes poorly, and the attempts of a co-worker and Stu's mother to be helpful only make things worse; Amy's pre-wedding jitters turn into a full scale panic attack as the ceremony begins; realizing that she doesn't want to marry Stu, she calls the wedding off; later that evening, Vincent tells Amy that Carole has left him for her oncologist.

Maxine confronts the D.C.F. commissioner over his budget cuts when she discovers that young girls in the foster care system are being moved from group homes into a locked psychiatric facility to save money that is evidently being redirected towards decoratating the commissioner's office; when Todd is about to be fired for bucking hospital protocol in an effort to save a young boy's hand, Kyle stands up for him despite their ongoing conflicts; after an Amish teenager becomes pregnant during rumspringa and decides to return to her community with her daughter, the child's father countersues for sole custody, and Amy must make the incredibly difficult choice between having the mother be shunned by her family and the father never seeing his child again; fearing that Maxine is spinning so out of control that his job is in jeopardy, Sean cuts back her hours and strongly urges her to see a therapist; concerned about the effect that peer pressure at her public school is having on Lauren, Amy go

Amy presides over the custody case of a young boy whose mother thinks he is being harmed by the Neanderthal on-air posturings of his shock-jock father; Maxine discovers that becoming a therapist in lieu of becoming a patient doesn't work out for anyone involved; Kyle mends his fences with Heather and helps her bring some solace to her dying father; Gillian begins to doubt her feelings for Peter as she strikes up a friendship with the father of one of Ned's playmates; Amy becomes flustered when David doesn't seem to be interested in a relationship, and makes a fool of herself in confronting him with a complete misinterpretation of his reasons.

The rift between Peter and Gillian widens at Walt's christening; Maxine overcomes her resistance and resumes therapy; when a tree that's been neglected crashes through Amy's kitchen window, she mistakenly calls in a landscape designer who reveals a keen insight into the state of both Maxine's garden and her soul; a young girl appears in Amy's court charged with reckless endangerment for running a pro-anorexia web site; Maxine is disturbed when the frustrated mother of a boy with a chronic neurological disorder turns from conventional medical care to a dubious faith healer in an effort to help her son; Amy is mortified when an upheaval during her sushi dinner date with David ruins both the evening and David's new and very expensive shoes.

Maxine takes a chance in placing a young boy about to be released from juvenile detention back with his formerly negligent mother; Amy substitutes for another judge in criminal court and soon realizes that she has a prior relationship with each of the attorneys in the arson case she's been assigned; Kyle and Heather give their relationship another try; Amy buys David a new pair of shoes to replace the ones she ruined, and he asks her out on another date, which goes quite well; after Maxine decides to hire Ignacio to work on their yard, he insists that he needs to know her better before he can create a garden that's perfect for her, and they go out dancing together.

Ignacio says it with flowers as he continues his gentle pursuit of Maxine; Heather begins to act erratically around Kyle, who's shocked when he discovers the reason; Lauren and Peter each find a new perspective on life during a trip to the mall, and when Amy expresses displeasure at the look of things look upon their return, her brother gives her an earful; Maxine is perplexed by a father's reaction when she investigates a possible case of child abuse in a family with a history of violent behavior; a teenager tries to pull a fast one over on Amy in an effort to prevent his mother from gaining additional visitation time; Bruce puts his foot down when Amy once again attempts to cast him in the girlfriend role as she obsesses over her relationship with David.

Despite their protests, Maxine and Amy fail to convince anyone that that dinners out with Ignacio and David don't constitute dating; Amy is asked to decide if a man in the Witness Protection Program can regain custody of his eleven year old son after the boy's mother dies; Lauren and Victor are unhappy when they discover that their parents are dating; Maxine races against time to prevent the participants in a suicide pact at a local high school from carrying out their plans; Shelby's band gets a gig at a local bar, and Peter's invitation to his mother and sister to hear him play provides the opportunity for the relationships between Amy and David, Maxine and Ignacio, and Peter and Shelby to grow and intensify on the dance floor and stage.

Donna gets a little too invested in the future of Amy's relationship, or lack thereof, with David; a teenager charged with larceny and criminal mischief for destroying a bike belonging to her brother's girlfriend unleashes a terrible family secret during a hearing in Amy's courtroom; Rebecca lets the cat out of the bag when she reveals that the real reason Mia has asked Bruce to stay at his house for a few days is not that she's visiting her sick aunt nearby, but that she's bankrupt; Kyle has difficulty adjusting to the idea of becoming a father; Maxine investigates the home environment of some foster parents after discovering that they participate in costumed sexual fantasy role-playing conventions; Peter is less than thrilled at the blossoming romance between his mother and Ignacio; after some prodding, David finally gives Amy the kiss she's been anticipating, and confesses that he's still grieving deeply over the loss of his wife.

Peter is still unhappy about Maxine's dating Ignacio; on the anniversary of his wife's death, David asks Amy to accompany him to a support group meeting; Maxine teaches a young artist under DCF's care the true meaning of family and reaching out for love and support; Amy and David attend the bench bar dinner together and hear news about Stu that upsets Amy; Maxine discovers that her new beau is quite wealthy as she meets Ignacio's mother, ex-wife, and children; despite being in counseling, Peter and Gillian continue to quarrel, especially after Gillian disparages Peter's joining the band; Amy presides over an emotional abuse and neglect petition brought about by a grandmother who is seeking custody of the child conceived when her son raped the boy's mother; Kyle seeks out Peter for some advice on being a father after Heather complains about Kyle's negativity toward her and their baby, and realizes just how upset she is when he can't locate her to apologize; Amy and David come to an agre

Kyle disregards Maxine's advice at his own peril when he bends the rules for a new mother who wants to hold her newborn baby just once before she's returned to prison; when the tension and awkwardness between Amy and David as they keep bumping into each other in the court house becomes more than she can bear, Amy withdraws her consent to the breakup and they decide to reconcile; Matthew asks Gillian out on a date, and she nervously turns him down until she seeks out Donna for some single mother bonding and realizes what she really wants to do; Maxine asks Ignatio to family dinner, and is surprised when he shows up with a disapproving Isabel in tow; Kyle is wary when Todd offers a hand in friendship; Amy devises a creative way to allow a young mother to retain custody of her children as she struggles to earn a living hampered by idiotic provisions of the ""Welfare to Work"" program.

Tensions run high as the family prepares for Ned's birthday party; a shoplifting trial in Amy's court exposes a prostitution ring in a group home for teenage girls; Maxine enlists the assistance of a former client to help a dedicated foster mother as she struggles with illness; Bruce gets testy when Amy's unsolicited advice about his conflicts with Mia over their living arrangements hits too close to home; Gillian resists Matthew's temptations; compelling new evidence and a new witness force Amy to grant Danny Hawkins a new trial and cope with David's resistance to handing the case over to another prosecutor.

Amy fusses over Lauren's overnight school field trip to Philadelphia with Victor; Bruce is in for a shock when an old friend comes for a visit; Amy confronts David after Lolly Wetzel repeats Greenwich rumors that connect him with his wife's murder, and he finally tells her the horrifying details of Kelly's death; when Ignacio's pictures get mixed up with another family's at the photo lab, Maxine sets off to investigate if the pictures of a woman with a black eye indicate spousal abuse, and ends up learning more than she wants to about the woman's interests; Amy presides over the pre-trial hearing for a troubled teenager accused of killing her babysitter; against Todd's advice, Kyle takes time off to see if Heather is with her father in Boston, and is stunned when Mr. Labonte tells him that Heather has a troubled past with a history of telling lies, including that he had cancer; when Amy goes to David's office to accompany him on a visit to his therapist, she learns that he has left to

Despite David's protests, Amy puts an end to their romantic relationship when he finally returns to Hartford; Maxine realizes that a teenaged client who was abused as a young child has become mentally ill when the girl makes a series of false rape accusations; Kyle has a career epiphany after he meets a fellow traveler at the airport who happens to be an undercover police officer; at her 89th birthday celebration, Isabel Messina is as rude as ever to Maxine, but completely charmed by Sean as he sings her an unusual birthday song; Amy hears the case of a teenaged boy who keeps running away to join the circus; Amy and Kyle lend David support when a critically injured Victor is rushed into surgery after being struck by a car.

Unwilling to let a poor client go to extremes to get prompt medical attention for her daughter, Maxine finds a way to get D.C.F. to cover the surgery the girl needs; David declares his love for Amy; Maxine gets shocking news about Ignacio and breaks off their relationship; Amy tragically miscalculates a teenager's propensity for violence; increasingly jealous over Peter's involvement with Shelby, Gillian confronts him about the future of their marriage, and doesn't like the response she gets; with the help of Buck and a little gunfire, Kyle finally finds a career path he can get excited about; the Grays receive a very unexpected, and very welcome, visitor.

With all three of her children living once again under the same roof with her, Maxine finally decides to let them be the grownups that they are (horseplay notwithstanding) and fix their own breakfasts; the ceiling in Amy's courtroom collapses, and she is sentenced to a stint in Accountability court, which she deems a punishment for her ruling in the Casey Ives matter; shortly after his return from New Mexico, David is devastated to discover that the man who holds the secret to his wife's murder has died; Ignacio asks Amy to plead his case with Maxine; Sean asks Maxine to track down the missing placement records on a little boy, and they discover that there's no trace of him anywhere; Heather visits Kyle to ask his forgiveness, announce that she's entering into a treatment program, and tell him about their son, but he doesn't believe any of it; Maxine relents her stance on Ignacio a little by allowing him to fix the broken sprinklers in the garden; Amy tries to figure out what's behind

Vincent's struggles with his latest novel leads him into blowing off his agent, who responds by dropping Vincent and demanding the return of the advance that Vincent's already spent; Maxine receives another award, and uses her acceptance speech to talk about the young boy lost in the system that she and Sean can't seem to locate; Amy's dealings with two troubled teenage girls and their mothers in Accountability court inspires her to change her focus when she returns to Juvenile Court; Maxine tries to avoid removing the children of a overburdened single mother working to overcome anger and abuse issues; David finally feels that he's put his wife's death behind him and can now pursue a relationship with Amy; Ignacio lets Maxine know that he's ready to do whatever it takes to have a future with her; Amy fires Donna to propel her into practicing law; Kyle decides to accompany Heather to Minnesota and take care of their son while she's in rehab.

After Vincent asks his brother to lend him the money he needs to pay back the advance on his novel, Peter meets with his accountant to free up the funds and discovers that his business is headed toward insolvency; Maxine sets some strict boundaries for Ignacio, who soon realizes that it's time to divorce Francesca; Amy is back in juvenile court and immediately has a conflict with Bruce over the pace at which her docket is moving, but she persists in digging deeper into the case of a twelve year old boy who admitted to a felony murder; even though the publicity generates a lot of leads, Sean is upset when the Anthony Byrd case makes the paper, which recommends that they be fired for losing Anthony in the system; David buys a boat, but can't convince Amy to overcome her aversion to sailing; Maxine's teenage client mounts a publicity campaign to find an adoptive family before he graduates from high school; Donna resigns as Amy's clerk after accepting a position as a court-appointed minor

Amy has difficulty dealing with Lauren's need for privacy; blinded by Anthony Bird's loss, Maxine lies to Sean and makes all the wrong choices in dealing with a teenaged boy who's holed up in a hotel room after discovering that he was kidnapped by his mother as a child; Amy must determine if aggravated sexual assault occurred between two teenagers attending a sex party, but can't seem to leave the case in the courtroom when she encounters Lauren at home; Gillian takes the news of their financial difficulties well, and offers Peter her support; Vincent confesses to Gillian that he's no longer working on his book; Amy resists David's attempts to redefine their relationship.

Maxine teeters on the brink of collapse as she refuses to move out of Colton Gerard's hotel room, rages against Sean for his failure to run the department properly, and is suspended after being arrested for slapping a foster child who has abused and neglected her elderly and ailing foster mother; Vincent gets an eye-opening look at his life through the eyes of a teenager in foster care who was abused by his mother; Peter's praise of Gillian's mothering skills draws them closer together when they meet with their son's teacher, and they are shocked to discover that Ned is biting other children because his genius-level I.Q. leaves him bored with school; Donna is angry when an over-controlling Amy steamrollers right over her and the State's Attorney in a misguided attempt to help Donna win her first case as an attorney and ensure that her mentally ill teenaged client receives the help he desperately needs from the system; distressed about her mother's arrest and refusal to return home, Amy

Back at work from her suspension, Maxine is becoming unhinged as she desperately searches for Anthony Byrd; Amy spends a tense day awaiting the results of a breast biopsy; Donna's summation reveals how closely she identifies with the teenage client she represents in Amy's court; Peter and Gillian search for a school for Ned; Amy arrives home to find an unconscious Maxine on the kitchen floor.

Frantic with worry, the Gray siblings quarrel like two year olds, and Sean is wracked with guilt, as Maxine lies in an ICU bed recovering from a heart attack; Amy finally gets a new clerk, whose ability to speak Spanish is an invaluable aid in the sentencing hearing of a teenager charged with burglary and assault; Ignacio gives Vincent some wise insight into Maxine; reminiscing about the beginning of their relationship brings Gillian and Peter back together; after Maxine hallucinates about her mother's death in the same hospital, she checks herself out and returns home despite her doctor's recommendation that she undergo bypass surgery.

Maxine resists Gillian's home grown cardiac rehabilitation program; Lauren tells Amy that she wants to live with Michael; when Vincent comes to Sean looking for work, Sean refers him to Crystal Turner, who runs a outreach program for homeless teenagers; David quits his job and takes off for the Caribbean on his sailboat; Amy must decide whether a depressed woman with multiple sclerosis is well enough to care for her ten year old son; Vincent offers to tutor a homeless teenager studying for his G.E.D., but when he tries to get the boy off the street and into a group home, the boy disappears.

Amy learns that she is pregnant with David's baby after taking a home pregnancy test, resulting in David returning from his sailing trip to discuss with Amy their future together and what they mean to each other; Maxine's first case back since her heart-attack involves a seventeen year old single father; Amy presides over a case involving a boy who stabs his teacher; Vincent and Crystal take a ten year old prostitute to the hospital after being beaten up by her pimp.

When Amy tells Lauren about being pregnant, her reaction is not exactly what Amy would have liked; While working at the outreach office for teenage runaways, Vincent uses his flair for writing to encourage a teenage runaway to write a better essay about himself so that he will be accepted in a half-way house; Amy presides over a case involving parents who want to terminate their custody over their adopted child due to his short temper and destructive behavior; Maxine deals with a case involving a boy who uses his eight year old foster brother as a drug mule; Peter fears for his relationship with Gillian when all she wants to do is have sex; Amy and David become engaged.

Unaware that he is hiding his true feelings and pretending to be happy for her, Amy is annoyed by Bruce's casual response to news of her engagement. Amy is also annoyed that her relationship with Bruce has evolved to the point where he knows all of her idiosyncrasies, including, he asserts, how she'll rule in the heartrending case of a teenage girl with epilepsy whose parents disagree about whether or not she should have risky brain surgery that may stop her seizures; Elsewhere, Maxine has issues with an affluent, mostly white prep school after a student there is severely beaten; a publisher takes an interest in Vincent's new book; Lauren lashes out at Amy for being pregnant.

Amy oversees an emotional case involving a 13-year-old boy with a history of violent behavior who shot and killed his grandfather who was suffering from terminal lung cancer; Maxine uncovers a human smuggling operation while following up on a report of a young boy being beaten numerous times; Vincent witnesses the gunning down of a prostitute by her pimp; Meanwhile, Amy and David search for the perfect house to start their life together in.

Several weeks have passed since Amy's miscarriage, but things are not quite back to normal for her. She refuses to discuss the house with David and brushes off Bruce's admonition that she's becoming too close to Graciela. Maxine meets up with a high school friend at a wedding and discovers that her recent divorce has left her depressed. Maxine helps her reconnect with the world by getting her involved at the hospital - holding HIV positive babies to stimulate their growth. Crystal invites Vincent to come to her AA meeting marking 30 days of being sober and they begin a new phase in their relationship. When Graciela is arrested for being in the car during a drive-by shooting, Amy goes all-out to keep her from being tried as an adult. Bruce asks her not to get too invested because he doesn't want to see her ""lose...again,"" which unfortunately, she does. David returns Amy's half of the deposit on their dream house and tells her that he thinks they should take a break.