Amy Madison Gray struggles to adjust to the new circumstances in her life as she separates from her husband and becomes a single mother to her young daughter, Lauren; moves from Manhattan to Hartford, CT to live with her opinionated mother Maxine, a retired social worker; and starts a new career as a superior court judge in family court. The first case on her docket, the placement of a child abandoned by a drug addicted mother, introduces her to the shortcomings and political realities of the juvenile justice system.

Amy must decide if a brain-injured woman is fit to be a mother; Maxine discovers that a teenaged client is being abused by his therapist; Leisha meets Amy, and faces her ire for piercing Lauren's ears without permission; Vincent and Maxine clash over his journalism career; Amy faces a class of insufferable law students when she's asked to teach a seminar at Yale; Donna takes modeling herself after Amy a bit too far when she begins to show up for work dressed and coiffed exactly like her mentor; it's all bark and no bite when Amy decides to dismiss the case of a drug dealer sniffed out by a four-legged member of the neighborhood watch.

When Donna's birthing center burns down the night before she goes into labor, the Grays offer the use of their house for her baby's water birth; the family becomes concerned at Maxine's curiously dispassionate response to the news of Socrates's death; Amy is upset when Vincent decides to spend Christmas alone with Carole rather than with the family; as she begins to suffer from burnout on the job, Maxine shifts some of her caseload onto her colleagues and finally takes Amy's advice to see a therapist; Amy gives four girls who filed a false molestation complaint against their teacher a taste of their own medicine when she has them taken into custody.