The professionals who will take you into the jungles of American justice
Overview
L.A. Law is an American television legal drama series that ran for eight seasons on NBC from September 15, 1986, to May 19, 1994.
Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features including a large number of parallel storylines, social drama and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff.
The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.
Episodes
S01E01 Pilot
September 15, 1986 7.3 120 min
Becker begins the day dealing with some irate clients and finds himself at the wrong end of a gun; Melman discovers a dead partner; Kuzak finds a creative way to see that justice is done...
Kuzak pursues a very attractive deputy district attorney, Grace Van Owen, even though she's engaged to marry the man managing her campaign for a seat on the bench; Perkins is beaten by her drunken husband...
Sifuentes is outraged when he learns that the motive behind an invitation to dinner at the Brackman house was to enlist his aid in perpetrating an immigration fraud; Kuzak continues to pursue Van Owen; Perkins...
McKenzie's disappointment in the greedy law school students whose class he addresses leads him to offer a clerkship to a student who appears to be more socially responsible; in defending a young teenager who murdered...
Kuzak fights for his terminally ill client's right to be cryogenically preserved after death; Becker whets his appetite for entertainment law when he brokers an extremely favorable divorce settlement for his movie producer client; Markowitz...
Van Owen faces hairy jokes from her colleagues and the anger of her ex-fiance after bailing out on her wedding; Kuzak represents a television news anchor suing for sex discrimination and wrongful termination when her...
Kuzak slyly sticks Sifuentes with a dog of a case, but it's Sifuentes who's sitting pretty after he discovers the teeth in the matter, and pulls out an unexpected win; Abby rebuffs an admirer; Becker's...
Van Owen's ex-fiance gets his revenge by humiliating her during a campaign appearance, thus sabotaging her race for the bench; when Kelsey shakes a trust's money tree to benefit the homeless, she also creates a...
Becker, Markowitz and Kelsey bicker over who will inherit Chaney's office; Van Owen prosecutes a man charged with the mercy killing of his terminally ill lover; to Kelsey's undying gratitude, Markowitz learns the secret of...
Kuzak gets nightmares over handling an appeal for a man sentenced to death; Van Owen helps Gilliam get a reprieve for Appleton; Melman comforts Becker when his parents try to put him in the middle...
An increasingly unstable Hershberg asks Kuzak to take over the case of a woman who shot a police officer; Rogoff reassigns Van Owen to night court as punishment for helping Appleton; Perkins makes a deal...
La Rosa digs up the ammunition Kelsey needs to succeed in representing an inventor in a contract dispute over patent royalties; Kuzak is horrified as he witnesses a severely depressed Hershberg commit suicide in court;...
Overburdened with Hershberg's caseload, and haunted with guilt over his death, Kuzak snaps at his colleagues, pays a heavy price for the way he handles a manslaughter case, and ruins Van Owen's plans for the...
McKenzie gets Kuzak sprung from jail; after Brackman's wife discovers his infidelity and serves him with divorce papers, he begs her to take him back when he discovers that she's represented by Lisa Weston, who...
The partners consider whether they should merge with a large New York firm; Kuzak and Van Owen bemoan the scheduling difficulties that keep them apart; McKenzie negotiates a sweetheart deal for Hood with the district...
Van Owen prosecutes a case of seminal importance; Becker comes to regret pushing a client beyond her limits after confronting her with her husband's infidelity despite her protests; in civil court, Sifuentes and Perkins represent...
When a pharmaceutical firm employs a jury consulting firm to assist him in a product liability suit, Kuzak becomes engaged in a contest of style over substance until he enlists Sifuentes's help in showing the...
Becker is enthralled by the beautiful, but somewhat incompetent, secretary who's temping while Melman is on jury duty until he discovers that their relationship will never be anything but professional; Van Owen contemplates buying a...
Sifuentes tries to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat by responding to the advances made by an attractive juror after his elderly pot smoker client is found guilty, but soon comes to realize...
Kuzak faces a tough opponent in civil court when he represents a college student suing for damages after being raped; the ongoing conflict between Brackman and his litigious neighbor escalates after Perkins successfully represents Brackman...
Markowitz and Kuzak join forces to help a fisherman when the IRS confiscates his boat in a tax dispute; Sifuentes convinces Feldman to drop criminal assault charges against Brackman, but Kerris chokes on the deal;...
Becker represents the wife of a children's television show host who sues her husband for divorce after catching him in bed with an unlikely partner; Brackman and Kerris finally settle their differences; Sifuentes begins to...