Sitting in for a friend who's undergoing chemotherapy, Amy presides over her first jury trial and clashes with a former law school classmate who represents the parents of a murdered girl who are suing the parents of her teenaged killer; Maxine shops for a new car for the first time in her life; Vincent feels that Maxine doesn't take his writing seriously after she interrupts his work to ask him to babysit the six rambunctious first graders attending Lauren's sleepover party.

Amy takes it personally when Stuart appeals her decision to overturn the jury's verdict; Maxine arrives at a creative solution in placing an extremely gifted teenager who chronically runs away from his foster placements; Donna becomes Vincent's new roommate; Amy must decide whether to remove a child from the care of a mother suspected of suffering from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome; after her verdict is upheld, Stuart asks Amy out on a date, and she royally disses him as she turns him down flat.

Representing the governor, Stuart Collins offers Amy a chance to apply for an appellate court appointment if she'll rule against two women who both want to be named as the mother on their baby's birth certificate; Maxine's friend Vivian gets to see social work in action when her girls-day-out with Maxine gets derailed by a struggling and overworked farmer who believes that his kids should be at home working on the family dairy farm rather than at school; a mourning Gillian finds solace from an online support group when Peter offers her none; Vincent becomes concerned about his finances when he learns that Carole has quite a nest egg; Amy apologizes to Rob, and they reconcile.

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 must decide the appropriate punishments for a high school gang leader who tortured an undercover police officer, and for a teenage girl who perpetrated day-trading fraud; Maxine helps an abused little girl at Sanctuary House locate her long-lost dog; Donna goes to annoying extremes to make Vincent's novel a success; Sean tries to get Maxine to spend more time at D.C.F. and less at Sanctuary House; before he sets off on a pilgrimage, Stuart does his best to seduce Amy.

Stuart Collins returns from Sri Lanka reincarnated as a criminal defense attorney eager to take on Eric's case and renew his romance with Amy; Peter and Gillian hear unsettling news about the potential health of their unborn child; Maxine and Sean work together to create the best possible placement for a young Sudanese refugee; a father petitions Amy for legal custody of his 14 year old daughter after her mother allows her to drop out of school and pursue a full-time career as a pop star with an over-sexualized and age-inappropriate image.

Amy, Bruce, Lauren, Sean and Maxine rally around Eric as he goes on trial before an eccentric but wise judge; Maxine takes issue with Eric on a question of ethics about his testimony which colors her reaction to his verdict; after Zola breaks up with her boyfriend, she unsuccessfully resists Bruce's efforts to woo her; Kyle is faced with a medical and ethical dilemma when his patient's routine problem takes an inexplicable and tragic turn; Eric tells Maxine about a new person in his life; Heather and Kyle grow closer.

Maxine tempers her frustrations over her daughter-in-law's outlandish plans for the Gray-Duff nuptuals after Peter tells his mother about Gillian's refusal to face their new baby's condition; Stu's plans for a romantic dinner to celebrate the rekindling of his relationship with Amy are derailed by an obnoxious couple at the next table; Kyle discovers why Lily has been treating him so poorly; after Amy hears the case of a pro-cannabis couple threatened with losing custody of their son after he brings a joint to school, she has a talk with Lauren about drugs; Maxine investigates when a man asserts that his ex-wife has been cheating on the drug tests required as a condition of her retaining custody of their daughter; Amy has conflicting emotions after she reads the Judge Gray tribute page on Donna's blog.

Stu convinces a reluctant Amy to go on an overnight camping trip which ends up bringing them closer together; after planning to wed Jared secretly on the weekend, Maxine is devastated when he has a sudden, fatal heart attack in China and lashes out in her grief to everyone around her, including a rebellious teenaged client; tensions run high in the Gray household when Maxine refuses to allow anyone to comfort her, and Peter and Charles bicker over the funeral arrangements as a way of handling their sorrow; Maxine gathers family and friends at the diner for a moving memorial service.

On ""Take Your Daughter to Work Day"", Lauren learns how lucky she is when she spends the afternoon with Maxine, and Rebecca becomes seriously injured after she falls during a seizure; Kyle continues to drink; Stu reassures Amy that she's a permanent part of his life after she fails to make a fabulous first impression during lunch with his opinionated mother; Bruce struggles to get a boy discharged from probation; after begging Lily to rehire Heather, Kyle is shocked when she refuses to return; Heather and Zola let the men in their lives know that they've got romance on their minds.

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.

A stressed out public defender goes ballistic in Amy's courtroom; Maxine tries to figure out why a woman who lost her son wants to give up her foster child; Kyle tells Lily how he feels, but it doesn't go as he hoped; Amy is confused about whether or not Stu actually proposed marriage; Gillian goes into labor with unexpected and seemingly tragic results.

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.

Maxine criticizes Amy's ruling that an emotionally-fragile girl is competent to serve as a witness in her mother's murder trial. Kyle, who doesn't know how he himself made it safely home after a night of heavy drinking, has to give medical treatment to a drunken driver who killed one of his hospital co-workers on the road. Lauren receives a poor grade in math and blames it on the teacher.

Amy presides over the case of a prominent athletic star accused of rape. Maxine, feeling the pressure to find a new place to live, considers selling the diner. Kyle tries to locate a kidney for a young patient who needs a transplant. Stu and Amy still can't come to terms on where to go for their honeymoon, with their wedding only a month away.

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.