After pleas from Maxine and Peter, Amy takes the first step in mending fences with Vincent; back in town with a new job working in the prosecutor's office, Stu Collins has a near-fatal heart attack after a verbal altercation with Amy, who is unable to contact any of his friends or family; Maxine tries to help a couple who cannot agree about giving up the special needs child they adopted, but is unable to avert the tragic outcome of their dilemma; the teenage son of a mobster appears in Amy's court for setting a fire which destroyed a store and maimed an employee after an argument with the store's owner; on the road to recovery, Stu confesses to Amy that he's had a crush on her for years; Amy and Bruce test the boundaries of their relationship.

Vincent and Amy are frantic when Maxine disappears; Carole ignores a lump on her breast; Amy suspects a lawyer of exploiting starving children and also hears the case of two kids who attack a Live the Lord club and try to excuse it by saying that the club should not be meeting on school grounds.

Amy asks Bruce to set her up with his friend, but it doesn't go quite the way she planned; Amy hears cases involving a woman who breastfeeds her 6 year old son and a couple who can't decide whether to send their ""mute"" daughter to therapy; Maxine goes to bat for an unhappy spelling bee champ; Gillian obsesses about getting Ned into an exclusive preschool.

Lauren asks if ""cheating"" was the reason her parents divorced; Bruce warns Amy that she's being set up after Judge Keeler asks to observe her in court; Maxine enlists Kyle's extreme sports expertise in supporting a teenager with low self-esteem; Amy presides over the sentencing hearing of a teenaged girl who assaulted three gang members with a baseball bat; a police officer asks Amy to officiate at her divorce ceremony; Bruce and Amy iron out some communication issues; Kyle and Amy finally have it out over the incident in the past that caused the rift in their relationship; Amy hears the case of teenager who wants to be emancipated so that he can contest his stepmother's decision to keep his comatose father on life support.

The Gray house is completely ransacked by vandals who appear to have targeted the house after receiving an adverse judgment in Amy's courtroom, and it takes all of Amy's persuasiveness to convince herself and her daughter that they are safe; after Joe McKenzie takes over at Teen Harbor, Kyle disagrees with his strict approach but they settle their differences after Joe sees how Kyle uses his training to treat an epileptic teenager; Maxine enlists Sean's help in her own investigation into Pamela Taylor's death at Buckley Hills; Amy hears the case of parents accused of abuse for transferring their son to a new school every year to get him more easily noticed by the scouts who can recommend him for a college basketball scholarship; Maxine finally finds the perfect foster father for Eric right under her very nose, although it takes a little convincing for both the adult and the teenager to see the wisdom of her choice; against his better judgment, Bruce spends the night at Andrea's house,

Maxine is saddened when Jared fails to call her upon his return from China, so Sean arranges a casino night fund raiser to cheer her up; a born-again teenager charges her mother with parental neglect for working as a stripper, and Amy must decide whether to place the girl in foster care; Donna confronts Kyle after she finds a syringe and morphine in his room drawers and is relieved to hear that he keeps it as a reminder that he is capable of making the choice to stay clean every day; after his daughter tells him about her ill-timed encounter with Bruce, David Solomon files a complaint against Andrea, who immediately ends her relationship with Bruce for fear of losing custody; responding to a message from Bruce attempting to explain the situation, Solomon shows up at the courthouse and threatens, taunts and insults Bruce, who is arrested and jailed after he knocks Solomon to the ground with a punch.

Amy and Michael agree to work out Lauren's custody with a mediator; Maxine and Kimberly clash over a child lost in the system; Jared returns from China to get an answer from Maxine; Lauren fears that their apartment is haunted and Amy begins to agree with her; appearing before Amy in court as the caseworker for a teenaged mother, Maxine gives an impassioned plea which provides Amy with food for thought about not only the girl, but Amy's relationships with Maxine and Lauren; Bruce runs into Amy and spurns her offer of friendship, but later relents most emphatically.

Amy's ruling in the case of a teenager who called in a bomb scare to avoid a test is complicated by the arrival of an I.N.S. agent who's ready to deport the boy to Afghanistan, and almost certain death, if he's found guilty; Eric saves Lauren from being kidnapped by Jason; Gillian's raging hormones leave Peter exhausted as she goes into overdrive about the plans for Maxine's wedding; Kimberly blackmails Sean into getting her job back in exchange for helping Maxine find an endangered teenager who's aged out of the system; Kyle defies hospital protocol to give a dying woman her last wish; Eric ends Jason's stalking with tragic finality.

Maxine's reunion with Sally Godwin, her college classmate and former co-worker in the social work trenches, comes under strain after the up-and-coming politician reveals that she's back in town to evaluate Maxine's performance, and they clash over the case of a child with a sexually transmitted disease; a father testifies on behalf of his teenage daughter who appears before Amy for conspiring in his attempted murder; Bruce utilizes Donna's assistance in a creative approach to mediating the divorce of an elderly couple fighting over custody of their pet parrot.

Maxine's first day back on the job finds her removing a boy from the custody of his mother, who was one of Maxine's clients for a short time eight years earlier; although Amy is worried about Maxine's bottling up her grief, she becomes unsettled when Kyle tells her that Maxine has been talking to Charles instead of her own children; Kyle does an end-run around Lily to get an indigent patient the reconstructive surgery she desperately needs after an accident; Amy hears the custody case of a teenager whose divorced parents disagree about sending her to a school for overweight children.

Amy must decide if it's in a teenager's best interest to get married; Bruce investigates when he suspects that a teenager's probation violation isn't as innocent as his parole officer claims; Amy struggles with telling Lauren that she's dating Stu; after worrying about Gillian's insistence that the baby's fine, and a girl, Peter decides to let her hold on to her beliefs when he discovers that they're having a boy; Lily considers accepting a job offer in New York; Michael confesses to Amy that he was to blame for their divorce.

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.