Amy seeks to have Lauren qualified as a ""gifted"" student; Maxine agrees to take a anger management class after going too far in insulting a coworker and accosting the boy who vandalized the Gray home; Amy dates a detective who's ""out of her league""; Vincent agrees to be Donna's birthing partner; Amy presides at the sentencing hearing for a teenager who intentionally maimed a rival player during a hockey game.

Felled by the flu, Amy collapses in court, but not before presiding over a custody hearing for a cow; long-buried feelings erupt between Gillian and Peter when Evie offers to return Ned; Amy's caseload has more of an effect on her temporary replacement than he expected; after Sean grounds her to desk duty for taking wannabee gangbangers on an unauthorized field trip to the local I.C.U. which draws outcries from their parents, Maxine decides not to ask him for a few days off to accompany Jared on a business trip to China; Carole accepts a job offer in San Francisco and asks Vincent to come with her; Sean supports Maxine when Jared's plane is reported missing; the Gray family rejoices when both Ned and Jared are returned to them safely.

As Peter and Gillian prepare for Ned's christening, Evie returns to claim her son; Amy and Tom decide to make their relationship public; Carole has trouble dealing with Vincent's relationship with Donna; Maxine moves forward with her plans for Sanctuary House; Amy looks for signs of remorse from a teenage boy accused of killing his sister.

Peter and Gillian lose custody of Ned to Evie; Peter tries to drown his grief in alcohol and is arrested for drunk driving; Gillian fixates on Peter's drinking to avoid dealing with her loss; Amy must rule on the future of an unborn baby after learning that the mother is under investigation for the disappearance of her first child; Maxine and Sadie investigate the strange case of a woman who thinks she's a holly bush; Vincent and Carol attend her parents' 30th wedding anniversary party; Bruce loses his cool when he mediates a dispute over a teenager's plastic surgery.

Maxine reunites a couple with their kidnapped baby; Vincent is upset when Carole usurps his prerogative to tell his family about their move in his own way and time by blurting out the news over family dinner, while Amy is downright angry at her brother's decision; when she learns that he's been granted an appeal, Donna can't face serving Oscar with divorce papers herself; Amy watches helplessly as a mother whose custody petition she denied takes drastic measures to protest Amy's decision.

When Donna's birthing center burns down the night before she goes into labor, the Grays offer the use of their house for her baby's water birth; the family becomes concerned at Maxine's curiously dispassionate response to the news of Socrates's death; Amy is upset when Vincent decides to spend Christmas alone with Carole rather than with the family; as she begins to suffer from burnout on the job, Maxine shifts some of her caseload onto her colleagues and finally takes Amy's advice to see a therapist; Amy gives four girls who filed a false molestation complaint against their teacher a taste of their own medicine when she has them taken into custody.

Amy must decide whether to terminate the parental rights of a couple convicted of child abuse; Maxine's disrespect rubs a building inspector the wrong way, endangering the scheduled opening for Sanctuary House and thus the federal funds needed for its operation; Amy grapples with her jealousy over Lauren's attachment to Katie; Donna decides to divorce Oscar; Bruce and his sister Winnie quarrel over where their mother should live.

Amy is as shocked as Lauren is pleased to learn of Michael and Leisha's impending wedding; sensing that Maxine has reservations about their relationship, Jared suggests that they take some time away from each other in order to gain a little perspective; Vincent is attracted to a producer he meets when he's invited to read his short stories on the radio; Amy must decide if an alcoholic mother responsible for the death of her daughter has recovered enough to regain custody of her son and retain custody of her unborn child; Maxine is distressed when the state's attorney declines to file charges in the Roseland case; Bruce unhappily assents when Mia suggests that Rebecca spend more time with her in New York; Amy hears the case of a divorcing couple fighting over frequent flyer miles.

Amy must decide whether to remove an eleven year old girl from the custody of her Wanderer parents; Vincent writes an article criticizing the foster care system which gets a frosty reception from his mother and siblings; Maxine is forced to testify for the prosecution during Jodi Larson's trial; Gillian's proposal that the entire Gray family take a formal Christmas portrait is met with a resounding lack of enthusiasm; Bruce mediates a custody modification dispute between a contentious couple.

Amy gets to know Rob, Lauren's very attractive sensei, better when he brings Lauren home from class after Amy has forgotten to pick her up; Maxine finds some powerful allies in her quest to open a facility devoted to helping victims of child abuse; Amy enlists other judges to volunteer their free time to finalize long-delayed adoptions; Donna becomes depressed when Oscar reveals that he is guilty of his mother's murder; Amy is asked to decide whether an exorcism is in the best interests of a young girl; Jared refuses to let Maxine push him away; Amy reluctantly hires Rob's niece as Lauren's new babysitter.

Maxine contemplates ending her relationship with Jared after meeting his son again, while Amy oversees a case involving a mother who wants to deny visitation rights to her daughter's grandparents; Vincent's decision to quit his job to write a novel unsettles Carole.

The Sanctuary House staff works together to determine the identity of the adult who molested a twelve year old boy who confessed to raping his five year old sister; after Bruce arbitrates a visitation schedule disagreement between a divorced couple and wonders if their child is being abused, Sean offers his help; Carole persuades Vincent to ignore his agent's advice to make his book more commercial; Amy faces a swarmy host and his ignorant, self-serving politician guest as she appears on a tv talk show in defense of the juvenile justice system.

As the Gray family tries to cope with the aftermath of the explosion, Maxine cuts back on her workload to help Vincent through his difficult recovery, while Amy realizes that she's still harboring resentment towards Vincent for putting himself in danger to save her life; Gillian takes a forceful approach to Maxine's avoiding Ned; Amy hires an attorney to counter Ian's accusations; Maxine ducks Jared's calls on Edward's birthday; Amy's new C.S.O. is everything that Bruce is not; Vincent's reluctance to leave the hospital causes him to conceal his progress from his family; after telling Bruce to lighten his docket, Judge Salinger is displeased to discover that Bruce has transferred a case to Amy hoping that she will render a more just ruling for a young boy caught in a bureaucratic morass; Sean urges Maxine to get back to work by taking on several sexual abuse cases from the same preschool; Amy refuses to allow a severely depressed mother who is grief-stricken over the recent death of he

Amy hears a manslaughter case involving a 15-year-old boy who's into goth and accused of luring a girl into a mutual suicide pact; Maxine investigates allegations that a boy is being neglected by his mother; Gillian meets a man she's been corresponding with via the Internet.

Amy finds herself in the middle of a love triangle when she considers giving Tom Gillette a second chance while she continues to date Rob; Maxine investigates the case of a boy from a seemingly perfect family who is going deaf; Amy tries to adopt a dog.

Maxine goes overboard in mothering Vincent after he's released from the hospital and moves back into her house to recuperate; Amy sentences a teenager accused of bullying small children; Donna uncovers incriminating information about Ian; Lauren's soccer coach turns out to be an old friend of Amy's; after the police reach a dead end in a child molestation accusation, Maxine stumbles upon the ammunition needed to reopen the case; Lauren lays a guilt trip on Amy about her being a work-outside-the-home mother; Amy demands a written apology after the investigation about her relationship with Bruce is dropped for insufficient evidence; when Gillian and Amy disagree about babysitters, Peter disagrees with his wife's plans to quit her job; after presiding over the case of a teenager whose infant son died after she left him on the steps of a church, Amy goes ballistic when a father at one of the soccer games becomes verbally abusive; Amy gets Bruce transferred back to her court, and is shocke

Vincent returns to work; Gillian nervously agrees to allow Donna to babysit for Ned so that she and Peter can have a romantic wedding anniversary celebration; Amy takes an instant dislike to Lolly's husband when she accepts an invitation to dinner; after Russell's mother begs him to recall her son's last moments, Vincent pores over the police tapes, struggling to remember; Amy decides the fate of a teenager found guilty of accidentally killing a classmate; Maxine incurs Sean's displeasure when she hands out a condom during the birth control class she volunteers to teach on her own time; Amy is distraught when she realizes that she was greatly mistaken in dismissing a stalking claim as frivolous.

Amy contends with a high profile attorney who attempts to bully her during a paternity case; Maxine struggles over mending fences with a neighbor; Vincent's near-death experience gives him a sense of fearlessness that gets him into trouble with Len; Peter questions his ability to raise a biracial child after he ignores a collegue's racist remarks; Maxine continues her investigation into sexual abuse at a preschool; Amy and Lolly take a self-defense course together.

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.

Evie walks back into Ned's life just as Peter and Gillian are set to adopt him; Maxine deals with a young girl who wants to be adopted before her 18th birthday, and a 12-year-old boy who refuses to be adopted because he believes his birth mother will come back one day.

Amy finds herself fending off Nick's advances and agonizes over whether she should tell Lolly; Maxine assists a detective in tracking down an undocumented Cambodian boy's parents; Amy rules on a case involving a teenager who refuses to attend school after the principal discontinues the gay pride club on campus.

Jonathan Ashworth joins the Sanctuary House team and manages to ruffle everyone's feathers; Amy tries unsuccessfully to displace some doubts about her relationship with Rob onto Maxine, but is finally forced to confront reality; Bruce quarrels with Winnie over their mother's move; Maxine is displeased at the methods Jonathan uses to engineer the arrest and conviction of the Roseland pedophile; Amy hears the case of a boy with gender identity disorder whose parents are charged with educational neglect for keeping him out of school after he's harassed by his classmates.