Four Boston shows on two networks that traded characters back and forth, including one case that started on Fox at nine and finished on ABC at ten.
Start with Ally McBeal rather than The Practice, even though The Practice came first. Its first season is only six episodes and can go anywhere, and the first character to cross does so from Ally McBeal into The Practice in January 1998.
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Four and a half years of two shows on two networks, 1997 to 2002. Air date order works and handles everything except one evening: on 27 April 1998 both halves of the crossover carry the same date, and Ally McBeal was the nine o'clock one.
From October 2000, in the same Fox Monday block, directly before Ally McBeal. Optional, but it carries one of the two crossovers and the principal who later shows up on Boston Legal.
Ally McBeal ends in May 2002 and The Practice runs two more years. Season eight loses six regulars to a budget cut and gains Alan Shore, and its last seven episodes are the pilot for what comes next.
Four and a half months after The Practice ends, with no overlap. Alan Shore, Denny Crane, Tara Wilson, Sally Heep, Catherine Piper and Judge Harvey Cooper all walk over from the other show. The old firm closed; this is a continuation of one thread, not of the series.
Then what? Boston Legal finished on 8 December 2008 and nothing has followed. An Ally McBeal sequel has been in early development at ABC and has never been ordered.
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