Judging Amy

Short calendar day drops 54 cases on Amy's docket, and the long day stretches into night when she's forced to make a life and death decision about the fate of an abused child; Maxine decides to return to work; Amy's confrontation with Lauren's obnoxious new teacher leaves her with yet another responsibility in an already jam-packed calendar.

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 must determine if a comatose boy who is believed to have healing powers is being abused by his grandmother; Maxine clashes with her supervisor over taking an underfed little girl away from her anorexic mother; Vincent begins a relationship with an older woman.

A death threat, coupled with Maxine's disapproval, puts a crimp in Amy's blossoming relationship with Tracy; Vincent begins to feel like he's Chris's pet project; Maxine rekindles an old friendship; Amy officiates at Donna's wedding to a convict; Maxine helps a second generation foster teenager keep her infant son out of the system.

A woman fights for custody of her son after the boy's father claims that her practice of the Wiccan religion makes her an unfit mother; Vincent gets an agent; in the week before Halloween, Lauren gets spooked by some older boys; Amy confronts narrow-minded attitudes at the P.T.A. meeting; in direct defiance of Susie's orders, Maxine pursues the search for a boy missing from a family with a history of child abuse.

Maxine fights to keep a deaf boy in the care of his teenage brother after they are orphaned; Bruce disagrees with Amy's decision in an interracial adoption case; Vincent gets a job teaching writing; Donna seeks Amy's assistance in getting a conjugal visit with Oscar; Vincent learns something surprising about his father.

Amy presides over the sentencing hearing of an emotionally immature teenager convicted of the murder of a ten year old girl during a drive-by shooting; Vincent is shot when he attempts to rescue a woman who's being assaulted; Maxine investigates a mother who claims that she was abducted by aliens; a divorced couple asks Amy to resolve a dispute about the care of their five-day-old son.

Amy juggles preparing Thanksgiving dinner, being on call, and coping with a surprise announcement from Michael; Gillian asks Maxine for help in financing another in-vitro procedure; Amy presides over an adoption in which the biological father shows up at the last minute to claim his child; Hillary tries to settle the score with Vincent during a Thanksgiving party at Alan's; Amy sentences two boys convicted of animal cruelty.

Amy hears the case of an extremely abused, mentally ill teenager who has stabbed a teacher; Vincent's agent finds him a publisher who will sign him only if he completes another short story in the next four days; Maxine tries to help an overstressed young mother who is afraid that she will hurt her baby; Lauren strains Amy's patience as she waxes enthusiastically over Michael's girlfriend; Maxine faces a house full of her children for a week as Vincent moves back home to devote all his energies to writing, and Gillian takes a much-needed break from the strain that infertility has placed on her marriage; Vincent's short story inspires Gillian to return home to Peter and reconsider adoption.