McKenzie, Brackman restructures itself into a leaner, meaner firm with the arrival of new partner Daniel Morales and the departure of Grace, C.J. and Susan Bloom; after a harrowing encounter with a dissatisfied knife-throwing client, Becker swears off marital law and vows to make entertainment law his new specialty; Gwen begins her internship and expresses an interest in the widowed Daniel and his baby daughter; Zoey is released from the hospital, but not from the guilt surrounding the shooting; Becker represents an actor suing his amusement park employer for unlawful termination; as the 1992 Los Angeles riots erupt, Brackman is mistaken for a looter and arrested, while Markowitz sustains severe head trauma after being dragged from his car and beaten by an angry mob.

Brackman sees life's underbelly from behind bars; Jonathan gets in a mudslinging contest in the final days before the election, and makes comments about the attack on Markowitz that draws the anger of the other members of the firm; Mullaney prosecutes a child abuse case in which the opposing counsel is a nun; Zoey seeks a change of venue for her life and career; Kelsey finds it difficult to work at home while taking of her husband, who is increasingly frustrated by his disability.

Brackman is distraught when the pocket watch he inherited from his father disappears; new associate Melina Paros joins the firm; Becker accepts an intricate assignment from Flicker, forcing him to deal with the manipulative wife of Flicker's silent partner; after Lincoln escapes from Benny and ends up at the pound, Markowitz takes extreme measures to get the dog released; Brackman gets a ghost writer for his autobiography; Taylor's pursuer sends her a gruesome gift, which only serves to alarm her further as she begins to suspect every man she encounters; Melman doesn't know how to handle Mullaney's new-found ardor; Paros prosecutes her final case for the State's Attorney's office as she attempts to prove that a woman may have abused her children.

Kelsey represents Markowitz in court and gets the charges suspended with Mullaney's support; suspecting that Morales may be her stalker, Taylor gives him the cold shoulder until Melman sets her straight; Paros wins her child abuse case with a little behind-the-scenes help from McKenzie; after Becker gives Flicker an ultimatum about Schuller, Flicker arranges for Becker to be carjacked and abandoned in the desert, where he comes to the rescue and offers Becker a ride home and a high-level job at the studio; a caring physician uncovers that the cause of Markowitz's strange behavior is a brain cyst that can be treated with medication, and he's released from the psych ward of the hospital; after Brackman coldly rebuffs the partners' gift of a new pocket watch, Lincoln finally offers up the original, to Brackman's joy and relief; Romney unsuccessfully pursues both Taylor and a job at the firm; Mullaney and Melman ride out a few rough patches on the road to parenthood.