Three successful, intelligent adults approach Judge Whipper Cone about legal representation in their quest to legally obtain a three-way marriage. Fish assigns Ally and Cage to the case, despite Ally's opposition. Holiday Blues permeate the office, causing several complications for the couples in the firm.

Ally gives Glenn, the model from the sculpting class, the cold shoulder during a chance encounter at a coffee shop. John Cage takes on a case in which the adult children of a plane crash victim sue the airline for the wrongful death of their father.

The firm takes on a case for a famous 80-year old artist who is battling his heirs for control of his estate. Ally and Billy co-council the case and find that the artist's relationship with his recently deceased wife mirrors their own. Fish intervenes in the relationship between Cage and Ally when she starts behaving in an obviously cold manner around the office.

Tracey tells Ally to fight the dancing baby. But Greg and Ally get in an accident, Ally is distracted by his dazzling smile, and she kicks the dancing baby, but turns out he might be real. Richard is ready to argue in court defending a woman accusing her boss of sexual harassment, and Billy and Georgia are worried that they might actually win the case.

Billy tries to get the firm into homicide law, something Ally has trouble coping with. Ally also needs to defend Renee who broke a man's neck.

A convicted felon tried to escape from jail, and John and Ally are defending him. However, the DA on the case is John's former love from college. Ally saw the love immediately, but John is worried that she won't return his feelings. A jilted bride is suing, but when the judge assigned to the case is Whipper, Elaine, Richard and Whipper all have to deal with their unresolved issues of loneliness.

Feeling nervous that the firm is not making enough money, Fish and Cage decide to hire another associate, a "rainmaker" who can bring in lucrative clients. They hire Nelle Porter, an attractive, late 20's litigator from a respectable firm. On her first day, Nelle manages to irritate Ally, Georgia and Elaine, but Fish and Cage seem very pleased with her. Ally defends a woman in her late-30's accused of having sex with a minor. When the boy testifies, Ally finds herself attracted to him. In Memory of PHIL LEEDS April 16, 1916 - August 16, 1998

Nelle introduces the firm to Ling Woo, her main client. They are suing a sex-talk radio host with a ridiculous lawsuit, but it's crazier that she might actually win and bring publicity to the firm. Richard's happy, but Ally just might find a way to undermine their own case. John is defending a restaurant who served horse meat, but his love for Mr. Ed has gotten him depressed, and tongue-tied - when it comes to Nelle.

Judge Happy Boyle has died, and the whole firm shares their Happy memories of him. John is fraught over moving his relationship with Nelle forward, and then he eats a meal he will never forget.

When Ling is sued for owning a mud wrestling club, Richard gets Ally, Georgia and Nelle to defend her, and he and John go undercover. Georgia sets Ally up on a date with a former boyfriend that she may still have lingering feelings for, but just before the date, Ally gets herself stuck in a tight situation.

It's Christmas time at Cage and Fish, and Elaine is preparing for the office party and John is trying to use the mistletoe to his advantage in trying to make a move on Nelle. Ally is happy to see the whimsical side in Billy again when they defend a man who was fired for seeing a unicorn. Meanwhile, Renee is struggling to follow common sense when she sees her old boyfriend, Matt, again.

Ally's favorite teacher from high school is dying, but she has a wonderful dream life which she would like to remain in. Ally decides to get a court order to force the hospital to put her into a coma. But things get complicated for Ally when she realizes that her teacher's doctor is Greg Butters. John pushes Nelle to the breaking point over his unwillingness to move their relationship into a physical one.

When Ally is visiting Greg in the hospital, she meets a boy dying of leukemia who wants to sue God. But Ling shows up, and then the gang at Cage & Fish learn something pretty surprising about her. Richard and John are up to their usual antics in court against Renee when they're defending a man who has been accused of attempted murder.

John and Ally are on a murder case, but to Ally turning 29 is much, much worse. John is turning 35 and decides he wants to live life on the edge; Nelle gives him a birthday present he'll never forget. Richard wants to break-up with Ling since she won't have sex, but he finds a way to tease her.

With the help of Barry White, John has changed. Nelle doesn't see it, but Renee does and agrees to go on a date with him. Billy and Georgia go to couples therapy, but even there they have to invite Ally in. Richard and Nelle are defending a firm that doesn't hire women, John joins them but he has a hard time understanding or accepting the case. Elaine is competing in a dance contest but needs a last minute partner. Turns out that Ling knows how to tango, but being nice is much more difficult for her.

Ally has retreated to her room where she is still seeing Al Green who can sing her life. Her neediness angers Nelle who is upset that John can connect to her inner world. Ally decides she's going to become a dating machine, but it causes a whole lot of awkwardness when Margaret Camaro shows up in the office, especially when Ling as lined up a parade of men for Ally to choose from.

Tracey's replacement, Dr. Flott, is a pill-pushing septuagenarian, and thinks Ally needs to be on Prozac. Everybody agrees, but is Ally ready to let Al Green go? Nelle and John defend a high school boy who kissed a girl; John sees himself in the boy, and doesn't think that Nelle has any compassion in her. Billy joins a club of like-minded men, but Georgia isn't very understanding.

It's the new Christmas, where an over-weight Santa is fired and put on trial. But with Renee and Georgia versus John and Ally, the court room becomes a crying and screaming match. Ally keeps seeing a younger version of herself and decides she needs to try and save Billy and Georgia.

Elaine becomes a mother when she finds a real, live baby abandoned in a Christmas nativity display. She wants to keep him and with the support of the entire office, she, Ally and John fight a tough court battle. In preparation for the Christmas party, Elaine convinces Ally to sing a sexy song but Richard and Billy have their reservations.

Ally is convinced that John is her one true love, but John is busy making devices that make Nelle a closer match to him. After a first date who wanted in, Elaine is concerned about the image of herself that she puts out there. Meanwhile, Sandy speaks up to Billy about what she wants.

Georgia blames Cage & Fish for the new Billy, and is suing the firm for the break-up of their marriage. When Richard and John are called lascivious, John gets mad and even. But when he rips into Georgia on the stand, Billy defends his wife, Ally is outraged for being Exhibit A, and Richard is sad that his firm has turned into anger and bitterness instead of fun.

Ally has donned an Internet persona to meet a man on-line and when she and Mark are in court, Ally thinks her Internet lover is the prosecuting attorney. But when the virtual sex turns into a real date, she finds herself arrested for statutory rape. Meanwhile, Nelle pleads her case to be made partner but John thinks she's a rich, elitist, ice queen snob, and Richard has done the math but the numbers don't work out.

Nelle and John sing the blues. Nelle is lonely after having left Cage and Fish and realizes that she actually liked it there, and John is reliving past pain since it's his birthday. Ally is in hysterics when introducing Brian to her parents, and her father doesn't take kindly to the new man in her life.

Brian asks Ally to move in with him, but torn between wanting marriage and wanting a more exciting man, she turns to her therapist for help. After meeting Larry Paul, a lawyer she mistakes as her old therapist's replacement, Ally concludes that he's an asshole, her and Brian's sex life is terrible, and now she can't get Larry off of her mind. Meanwhile John is defending a woman who wants an annulment because she doesn't think her husband found her attractive.

Heartbroken after her break-up with Brian, Ally and the girls form the Cage and Fish Women's Bar Association and put themselves out there, with every available man in the area. Richard and Ling are defending Cindy, a woman who still has one piece left over from her manhood. Mark pursues her, unaware of her little secret. John is defending a female sexual predator but has a hard time separating their professional relationship from their personal one.

Ally is dating a father and son, and then gets herself sued by a puritanical classmate over fallacious snide remarks. She hires Larry as her lawyer but becomes irrational upon learning that he's married, and then becomes even more irrational when she sees him dating Nelle. Mark is having a hard time dating Cindy because of everyone's phobia over his girlfriend's genitalia.

Ally's puritanical classmate, Kimmy, is back, this time claiming she was fired for being a prude and she needs Ally and John to defend her. But in court they are up against Larry. Ally and Larry are about to go on their third date, so Ally thinks she needs to be coached on how to kiss, and when the date doesn't go as planned she's ready to throw it all away. After seeing Ling use John as a kissing test dummy for Ally, Richard tries to find his own sexual persona.

John's idol, Nicholas Engblume, shows up and needs his help in court, and then Nicholas's wife shows up and needs his help in getting a divorce. John hires Larry to mediate the relationship between Nicholas and Brandy, while John and Ally defend a woman with Tourette's syndrome who is accused of murdering her boyfriend.

With Larry gone, Ally is hallucinating. This time it's Barry Manilow and therapy has taught her to physically fight her hallucinations. Richard has just hired a new lawyer, Jackson Duper, but he thinks it must be all a joke since his trial has a man wanting to dissolve his marriage to a nymphomaniac and then suing the priest who married them. It doesn't help matters that he was once biblical with Ling but never told her his real name, and Elaine sweats profusely at the sight of him. John thinks it's time to show Melanie something that is very special to him, but then finds out her views are fundamentally different than his.

John and Richard get into a squabble over Richard borrowing John's baseball glove without asking, since they insist they are 35 year-old men and not little boys, Melanie suggests they go to couple's counseling. In defending his gender-biased client, Jackson portrays all the women in the court room as sexual objects. That trick just might lose him to Ling but win over Renee. Ally plays match-maker to Elaine and Mark when he gets jealous over Elaine's attraction to Jackson.

Getting concerned that Larry is never coming back, Ally starts seeing his face everywhere. Which is a problem since Renee and Jackson have just started dating and Jackson is put off by Ally's many issues. John starts a war in the office with Nelle, at home with Melanie, and in the court room when he and his client staunchly believe that the entire point of marriage is to have children.

On the day of the trial, Ally starts defending a little person who was sued for defrauding his date. The bigger surprise is that Larry represents his date. Going against each other in court, neither are prepared to lose when they wager a foot massage on the case. Cassandra shows up in John's office all the way from L.A. ready to pursue him, but John is currently in a lull professionally and personally.

It's Ally's birthday and she's upset because she's alone. Not alone alone, but alone with somebody else. While everybody is planning their song choice for her party, Larry is in a deposition. Sting is in town and is being sued by a jilted husband for wooing his wife. Larry is going to have to pull out something extraordinary to make up for missing Ally's birthday.

With Larry gone, Richard assigns Ally to a case. A high school boy is seeking a court order to force a girl to take him to the prom. It's a long shot, but Ally wants to help the boy out, and she also thinks that Larry is the opposing lawyer. Richard has just hired Jane as his new secretary, but when she points out to him that everybody in the office is cold, he is sad and with John's help, decide that drastic measures need to be taken.

Raymond is sued for sexual harassment and he hires Jenny to defend him. The closer Raymond and Jenny get, the more they think they might like each other, and fewer reasons that Glenn and Ally have for not dating each other. Meanwhile, John is gone and Richard inhabits his hole.

A widowed Reverend who no longer believes in God believes that Ally has been brought to him by fate and he hires her as his lawyer which brings Ally back to a former client. John is helping a man sue his town for cancelling Christmas, but the case hits a holiday nerve and John has become disappointed in mankind. Elaine is preparing a Christmas party duet with Glenn but Jenny is having nothing of it and is willing to fight over her man.

With Jenny's mother's wedding approaching, Richard is trying one last time to get with her, while Ally is concerned about all men's philandering ways and may have lost all hope for love. Meanwhile, Kimmie needs John's help to sue a matchmaker who has declared that there is nobody on this planet to love her. Kimmie brings out John's lip twitch and Coretta brings out his anger when she attempts to introduce surprises in the courtroom.

A wayward wind blows Ally's hat, causing it to land on a post with a "For Sale" sign. The house is in probate and the bank is anxious to sell it, so Ally buys it. Ally defends a man who is addicted to his wife's happiness, so he commits larceny in order to obtain gifts for his wife. Jenny's neck is hurt, so Corretta recommends a chiropractor who has a vibrating chair that induces orgasms in women.

A 10 year-old girl knocks on Ally's door, and suddenly Ally is a mother. The fertility clinic is mortified, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a girl looking for her mother, her irate aunt wanting her back, and a confused Ally contemplating how to be a mother. Meanwhile, Richard is on his first murder trial. The client, who kicked his wife in the head mistaking her as a soccer ball, is pleased that Richard has graciously guaranteed acquittal, but John is suffering from stress that Richard's trying of the case is causing him.

John decides to leave the firm as a named partner and work part-time. Fish makes Ally partner. Nelle is upset. Ally reviews the books and discovers that Richard has been paying the employees out of his own pocket. Richard agrees to Ally's terms of working no later than 5:00pm, no weekends, and missing some days entirely. Ally tells Richard they need to let some people go. The realities of motherhood collide with Ally's fantasy of what motherhood is about. The show starts with Ally squeezing orange juice and milking a cow. Ally then fights with Maddie because Maddie doesn't want to go to school. Maddie tests Ally in several other ways. Ally over-involves herself by attending Maddie's class. Victor steps in and helps clear things up. Maddie has a bad day at school and Ally gives her bad advice for getting even. Victor offers to watch Maddie after school while Ally is at work. Ally comes home to a home-cooked meal made by Victor. Corretta defends Kelly Bridgeman, a junior attorney who says she was fired because she has AIDS. She has become symptomatic and the doctors give her two years. Owen Cobb, one of the senior partners, fired her because she's dying, and because the firm lost two lawyers on the first plane that hit the Twin Towers. It's revealed that his son died from AIDS a year before. Raymond defends the employer, but loses.

In her first duty as senior partner at Fish, Cage & McBeal, Ally has to fire someone. It goes even worse than she expected when Jenny takes it personally and Glenn takes the stand that if she goes, he goes. Nelle does not get fired but Ally makes her sing at the bar and her plan of deception backfires once Richard hires Claire Otoms as a secretary. At home, Ally has to deal with Maddie's first sleepover and leans on Victor for support.

An old woman shows up at Ally's house and mistakes Victor as the former tenant and her soul mate. Ally, concerned that somebody might be able to come and take Maddie away, decides they need to get DNA tests done, but then fails to recognize the cause of Maddie's recent outbursts at school and home. After the loss of Glenn and Jenny, Ally extends a job offer to Raymond but only on the basis that he is not allowed to act like a misogynistic, chauvinistic pig.

John is up against Lolita (real name Liza) in court but he has met his match when the young vixen ups the ante of his usual tricks. Todd reminds Ally of Larry and as she tries to pick a fight with Victor she ends up in the arms of Todd. Claire Otoms' wedding is put on hold when the firm decides she needs a pre-nup, but Coretta is off to play matchmaker again.

When Maddie suffers a nervous breakdown, Ally decides to move to New York, leading to tearful goodbyes with her friends; Fish and Liza decide to wed.