Facing financial woes, the firm is forced to share office space with an entertainment lawyer; Van Owen's high-profile client is charged with murdering her abusive husband.
Van Owen elicits emotional testimony from Elsa Chandler; the Government's handling of the MIA issue following the Vietnam War comes under fire in a family feud over a presumed-dead Air Force captain.
Brackman is the unwitting victim in a gay-bashing incident; Kelsey defends a logging-company executive in a case involving a tree-spiking activist; C.J.'s father comes to town on a bender.
Zoey's case threatens to move a death-row schizophrenic closer to an execution date; a splenectomy patient challenges a doctor's right to profit from her donor cells; Bloom bulldozes Roxanne in a battle over office turf.
A tenant at a housing project where guns have been banned sues for the right to defend himself; a recovering addict faces reproductive restrictions; McKenzie arbitrates a divorce between two animal trainers.
As new D.A. Ruby Thomas takes office, the firm's reputation is tainted when Frank Kittredge defends a mob boss; Markowitz challenges an exhibition-basketball team's firing of its female opponents.
Brackman's former sister-in-law sues to get the school board to pay for her disabled son's private education; Bloom defends an overweight man accused of assaulting a refreshment-stand owner; an overworked Gwen fights Becker's hypocrisy.
C.J. takes a personal interest in a case involving a friend, a divorcée whose lesbian affair foments a custody battle for her kids; Brackman can't seem to muster staff enthusiasm for the annual holiday party.
Mullaney is pitted against Zoey in his defense of an accused serial killer and rapist; a client's sanity comes into focus during the handling of a movie deal; Bloom finds evidence of McKenzie's indiscretion.
A patient paralyzed after surgery sues her physician; Benny petitions for custody of a homeless youth; not everyone is supportive of Brackman's courting Veronica.
C.J.'s client accuses the Government of negligence in the rape-murder of his wife; Becker's ego is cut down to size over the airwaves; Mullaney's presence stirs up trouble between Zoey and Rollins.
Mullaney co-chairs a suit by Honduran farmers who claim U.S. pesticides made them sterile; Zoey helps a co-worker confront her repressed memories; Markowitz meets the actress of his childhood dreams.
Sifuentes visits the firm and finds that his failed relationship with Van Owen demands his attention; Kittredge takes on a legal dispute involving a perfume queen and her protégé.
Flanagan brings suit against her father; McKenzie arbitrates a dispute between a cookbook author and her student; Rollins' dad comes to him for help.
A Jewish philanthropist halts funding for a medical researcher who is using data from Nazi experiments; the Markowitzes anticipate the worst from a girl claiming to be Stuart's daughter; Becker's fidelity is put to the test by Julie.
The partners disagree about Van Owen's defending a celebrity baseball player on rape charges; DePalma becomes embroiled in a sting operation on a corrupt judge; Markowitz offers Sarah a job at the firm despite Kelsey's reservations, then tries too hard to win her affections; Roxanne moves out after Rayburn deceives her about Becker's fidelity.
Becker's shrink drops dead; the Brackmans use Alexander to call one another's bluff; Kelsey fires Ned after he makes a pass at her; McKenzie chastises DePalma for how he participated in the sting operation, but comes to the young attorney's aid when a member of the bench exacts his own punishment for DePalma's role in exposing Kelton; during Susan Bloom's wedding, Alexander and Sam get into trouble, and Gwen and Kittredge get closer; Kelsey is taken into custody when she protests the I.N.S. arrest of Matthew's new nanny; Becker tries to regain Roxanne's trust.
A multimillionaire tries to buy his way out of a murder charge; parental concerns compound for the Brackmans and Benny when Alexander and Sam end up in juvenile court; and an INS review interrupts Bloom's marital bliss.
Mullaney works with a feisty young prosecutor when he takes an out-of-town assignment as the lead prosecutor in the case of a missing woman presumed murdered by her co-worker during a theft from the bank where they both worked; Markowitz represents a condom manufacturer whose flag-emblazoned wares were seized by Customs under federal obscenity laws; Becker's representation of a woman with Alzheimer's whose daughter is vying for conservatorship rights with her mother's much-younger new husband gets torpedoed by Frank Kittredge when he leaks Gwen's pillow talk about the case to the woman's daughter, with whom he's also having an affair; Zoey wonders about the future of their relationship when Jonathan considers whether to accept the offer of a short-term appointment to the city council that could lead to a long-term future in politics.
Frank is fired for his role in destroying Becker's case; C.J. represents a movie executive who's being sued by an actress for insisting that she get breast implants that later proved faulty; Zoey faces off against a jailhouse lawyer in the trial of a convict accused of murdering another inmate, and unwittingly helps to shape her adversary's future; Sarah comes running to her father when she has an argument with Karen over her new, older boyfriend, leading to fireworks among the women in Markowitz's life; Bloom hides her true feelings about the future of her marriage from her new groom.
A widower sues a psychic, claiming he was bilked; C.J. grows friendly with the opposing cousel in the breast-implant case.
Jonathan dumps Zoey; the Brackmans decide to reconcile and remarry; Victor Sifuentes returns to reclaim Van Owens' hand; Zoey's decision to advance her career by perjuring herself on the stand has tragic consequences when her testimony tips the scales in the case of a former inmate who sues the federal prison system after he contracts AIDS from a prison rape; Roxanne learns a hard lesson about Becker's selfishness and lack of responsibility when they discover that one of his former lovers is dying from AIDS.
