LawProcedural by Creator/DavidEKelley about the "sleazy" Boston law firm of Donnell, Young, Frutt & Dole, known for their high quotient of scummy clients and ethically questionable tactics. However, each of the characters at some point reveals having their ideals, with long speeches defending what they do and how they do it.

In its original form, it was a straight series of literate and intelligent courtroom dramas. Around the middle seasons, the show shifted substantially towards criminal drama, often featuring the now almost reputable firm being plagued by its dirtier former clients. In the last seasons, the show started focusing more on the characters' personal lives, both in and out of court (see OneOfOurOwn), and developing increasingly far-out plots with criminally insane clients rather than just sleazy ones, a move that did not prove popular with audience or critics. This shift ended in a conclusive [[{{retool}} Retooling]] in the last season, retiring a lot of the cast including even the lead character, and ultimately becoming a PoorlyDisguisedPilot for its {{Spinoff}}, ''Series/BostonLegal''.
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!!This show provides examples of:

* AccuseTheWitness: Used several times. It even becomes something of a trademark of the titular firm, code-named "Plan B."
* AmbiguousSituation: Frequently, as the show often doesn't reveal whether or not the defendant actually is guilty.
* AmoralAttorney: By the end, pretty much everyone does something unethical. The firm knowingly defends murderers.
** Alan Shore is an interesting inversion. While Alan does many immoral things (and he's particularly immoral in the Practice), he often does them for moral reasons. For example, he hides evidence (a knife) from the police in connection with a stabbing because the defendant (his client) is insane, and Alan would rather get him acquitted on all charges (the knife was the bulk of the case) and send him to a mental institution than risk the State psychologist finding him both sane and competent to stand trial.
* AntiHero: Alan, an AmoralAttorney who ends up gaining the moral high ground when he sues the practice after they (after benefiting from his skills, which bring in most of their business and keep them afloat) fire him and attempt to steal his clients.
* BeleagueredChildhoodFriend: To the point where it seemed like the featured client was one of these [[OncePerEpisode every week]].
* CommonNonsenseJury: Juries have returned some absolutely ridiculous verdicts in this series.
* ConvictedByPublicOpinion: Happens to some of the acquitted defendants.
* CourtroomAntic
* CrossOver: with ''[[Series/AllyMcBeal Ally [=McBeal=]]]''. The lawyers of DYF&D find Cage & Fish's liberal work ethic odd while Ally finds DYF&D dark, oppressive, scary and intimidating. They also did a CrossOver with ''Series/BostonPublic'' and [[RuleOfThree another]] with the short-lived ''GideonsCrossing''.
* DramaticPause: The time between the words "we find the defendant," and the actual verdict grew continually longer as the series progressed.
* FriendlyEnemy: Prosecutor Helen Gamble. Not only does she date Bobby at one point, but she and Lindsey eventually become roommates. One scene has her and Lindsey giggling, spraying each other with cream and generally having a lot of fun, when earlier that day they'd been on opposite sides of a murder case.
* GoodLawyersGoodClients: Averted; many clients actually are guilty, while with others, it's never proven one way or the other. Very rarely does the firm actually represent the innocent. In one episode of note, Eugene defends a client without any consideration for his guilt or innocence, refuses to put him on the stand or to believe in him. The client gets acquitted, but snaps at Eugene because he refused to believe in his genuine innocence.
* HelloAttorney: Most of the characters, though Jimmy and Ellenor were notable aversions.
* InformedAbility: Alan's skills as an anti-trust lawyer, which are mentioned by almost every other character. Throughout the final season (and ''BostonLegal''), he's seen practicing a variety of fields, but he is never shown practicing this field.
* ItsPersonal
* KarmaHoudini: Played straight and [[InvertedTrope inverted]] almost constantly. If the firm is defending a psychopath, they'll almost always get him off; if it's clear someone is innocent, you can bet they're going to jail.
* LawProcedural
* MercyKill: The crime being prosecuted in at least one episode. Another episode featured a man being prosecuted for ''inciting'' a mercy kill.
* MunchausenSyndrome: AmoralAttorney Hannah Rose helped a client to walk away with rape by pointing out the victim had been previously diagnosed with Munchausen, despite the dubious nature of why the doctor who made that diagnosis decided to do it.
* MurderByMistake: The firm once tried [[spoiler:and failed]] to save a client from being executed for this kind of murder.
* NoEnding
* OneOfOurOwn
* OnlyLawFirmInTown
* PedophilePriest: This trope caused Bobby to turn his back on the Catholic faith.
* PhraseCatcher: "LUCY!"
* PoorlyDisguisedPilot: The eighth season spends several episodes setting up the law firm and characters which will be the focus of its {{spinoff}} ''BostonLegal''.
* {{Powerwalk}}
* PunctuatedForEmphasis: "There's a head! There's a head in the bag!"
** Also done with a single word ("Mass. A. Chu. Setts.") by the judge in the firm's first capital case, which took them from Massachusetts to California.
*** They reused the same judge and his propensity for emphasising Massachusetts in BostonLegal.
* RecurringCharacter: Some of the firm's cases lasted several episodes -- sometimes as much as two months in RealLife -- so naturally the clients in those cases appeared in numerous episodes.
* TheReveal: The end-of-episode cutaway shot to [[spoiler: George Vogelman]] in a nun's habit was a very effective shock to the audience, since we had been led to believe he was innocent up to that point. Which was just not so.
* SassySecretary: Lucy.
* ScreamingBirth
* SerialKiller: A few, including the Poet, an unidentified murderer who provides a handy alternate suspect for the firm to pin a couple of the more brutal murders they defend on.
* SexySecretary: Lucy again.
* SocietyMarchesOn: A 1997 episode finds [[RaisedCatholic Jimmy Berluti]]'s mother coming out of the closet and asking her son to defend (albeit unsuccessfully) her right to marry another woman. If only she waited seven more years when same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts...
* {{Spinoff}}: ''BostonLegal''
* StartMyOwn: Bobby Donnell leaves the firm at the end of the seventh season to start his own firm, while Jimmy leaves near the end of the eighth to start his own after the fallout from the failed case against Alan.
* SympatheticMurderer: Some of the guilty clients fall into this trope.
* TwoferTokenMinority
* VigilanteExecution: Perpetrated by a number of different clients.
* VillainousCrossdresser: One serial killer did his dirty work in a nun's habit.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Jamie, when she sees her first dead body.
* WhatTheHellHero (these moments become increasingly common as the series goes on, and are the main contributing factor to the series' conclusion. [[spoiler: The firm is dissolved, and the few surviving members enter different legal ranks in the hopes of rehabilitating the damage their WhatTheHellHero moments have done to their reputations and their own sense of self-worth.]])
** The whole group of main characters get one during the final season when they fire Alan (who had, up to that point, kept the whole operation afloat by being their main source of revenue) and sue him for multiple perceived instances of immoral and unethical behaviour (including posing as a flight attendant and accessing the office computers to get information). Alan's whole defense comes down to, "Yes, I am an AmoralAttorney and a scumbag, but I brought this practice most of its revenue, none of these lawyers are any more ethical than I am, and I just want my slice of the pie." The court agrees, and awards Alan $2.3 million, causing the dissolution of the practice in the final episodes.
*** Worse, during the entire case Eugene insisted that Alan's lack of ethics disgraced the firm, that the firm had integrity. While that is partly true, in regards to non-criminal cases, the firm mainly gained its reputation defending known killers and being under-handed in doing so, suggesting that Eugene is delusional and that his beef with Alan is mostly personal.
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