Terry Louise Fisher began her career not in television but as a lawyer in the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. She later sidestepped into a specialty in entertainment law and in 1982 wrote for and produced the Emmy Award-winning series Cagney and Lacey. Other shows followed: Cutter to Houston and The Mississippi for CBS, the television movies This Girl for Hire and Your Place or Mine? (all 1983). But she is best known for her work as co creator (with Steven Bochco) and supervising producer of L.A. Law from 1986 to 1988. L.A. Law, which ended its run in 1994, was considered the quintessential example of 1980s "appointment television," perfectly capturing the greed, glitz, and power-seeking of the decade, and capturing in the process of its narratives an audience intrigued by those very elements.

     The power struggles among the show's law partners were echoed in Fisher's 1987 legal battle with Bochco, when a negotiation for Fisher to take over from Bochco as executive producer failed and he banned her from the set. Since then Fisher has published two novels, has produced other series and several made-for- television movies, and in the mid- l990s she co-wrote Cagney and Lacey: The Return (1994) and Cagney and Lacey: Together Again (1995). She also partici­pated in a pilot for Daughters of Eve, the first interna­tional prime-time soap opera, starring Sophia Loren and financed by Procter and Gamble.