Annalise Keating is everything you hope your Criminal Law professor will be - brilliant, passionate, creative and charismatic. She's also everything you don't expect - sexy, glamorous, unpredictable and dangerous. As fearless in the courtroom as she is in the classroom, Annalise is a defense attorney who represents the most hardened, violent criminals - people who've committed everything from fraud to arson to murder - and she'll do almost anything to win their freedom. Each year, Annalise selects a group of the smartest, most promising students to come work at her law firm. Working for Annalise is the opportunity of a lifetime, one that can change the course of our students' lives forever, which is exactly what happens when they find themselves involved in a murder plot that will rock the entire university.

Annalise takes on a new client, Max St. Vincent, an eccentric millionaire who is the key suspect in his wife's brutal murder. All the clues point to St. Vincent as the killer, but Annalise challenges her students to prove he's innocent - whether that's the truth or not. Meanwhile, Annalise deals with issues in her own home when her growing suspicions that Sam is somehow involved in Lila's disappearance start to affect their marriage. In flash forwards, we go back to the night of the murder and learn that Wes might be hiding a few secrets of his own.