'The Good Doctor' Spinoff 'The Good Lawyer' Debuts — Everything You Need to Know

Dr. Shaun Murphy might be getting some company. ABC's medical drama The Good Doctor is the latest network TV series to try and expand into a franchise with Season 6, Episode 13, entitled "The Good Lawyer."

In "The Good Lawyer," Shaun finds himself in legal trouble and is forced to retain an attorney. Enter rookie lawyer Joni DeGroot, whom Shaun connects with because she's also unique among her colleagues.

Joni has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), but when Shaun decides she's the person he wants representing him, she finds herself handling the biggest case of her relatively short legal career.

Audiences are already wondering where they've seen the cast of "The Good Lawyer" before and just how it connects to The Good Doctor. Keep reading to learn more about the proposed spinoff and exactly how it's being set up.

TV fans will recognize the two leads in The Good Lawyer cast. Joni DeGroot is played by Kennedy McMann, who earned recognition as Nancy Drew in The CW's Nancy Drew.

That show's fourth and final season will premiere on May 31, 2023—which means that Kennedy could be seen in two network TV series at the same time, depending on what happens to The Good Lawyer.

Felicity Huffman is very familiar to ABC viewers. She starred in the network's critically acclaimed series Sports Night, Desperate Housewives, and American Crime. Those three roles alone gave her one Emmy Award win, three Emmy nominations, and six Golden Globe nominations.

More recently, however, she made headlines for her involvement in the 2019 college admissions scandal. The Good Lawyer is Felicity's first TV role since she pled guilty in May 2019; she plays Joni's boss Janet Stewart.

Bethlehem Million plays Joni's much more practical older sister Abbie, who is a foil to her in many ways—because they're not just siblings, they're also roommates.

The cast will be fleshed out further should ABC officially order The Good Lawyer to series, but this trio clearly establishes the tone of the show. Just like its predecessor, it will focus on both Joni's professional and personal lives.

The Good Doctor episode "The Good Lawyer" is a backdoor pilot for a potential spinoff—meaning that The Good Doctor is using one of its episodes and its characters to help set up new characters for a new show. Backdoor pilots are a common practice in TV, testing the premise and cast with audiences to decide if they're popular enough to get their own series.

If the response to the episode is positive, ABC will order a full first season of The Good Lawyer.

The network's long-running police dramedy The Rookie recently got a spinoff entitled The Rookie: Feds and the two shows are connected, with characters from one series popping up on the other from time to time.

ABC also has Grey's Anatomy and Station 19, which regularly cross over. That precedent makes it safe to assume The Good Doctor and The Good Lawyer will regularly interact to create a third franchise. After all, St. Bonaventure's staff have had plenty of legal problems!

The backdoor pilot "The Good Lawyer" aired as an episode of The Good Doctor on Monday, March 13, 2023. Fans who missed it can watch it on Hulu beginning March 14.

No release date for the series has been announced since ABC hasn't made that decision yet. However, should they proceed with Season 1, it's likely to start in Fall 2023 alongside the next season of The Good Doctor (so that the network can cross-promote the two shows as much as possible).

The only question is when it will air. Many networks like to keep their franchise shows together, especially since it makes it easier to schedule the big crossover events that viewers look forward to.

However, The Good Doctor currently airs Mondays at 10:00 p.m. after The Bachelor and that's one of ABC's most popular shows. It's unlikely the network moves The Bachelor in favor of The Good Lawyer. So the series might have to air on a different night.

Whatever happens, Joni DeGroot and her colleagues have officially been introduced into the universe of The Good Doctor and made it just a little bit bigger.

The Good Doctor airs Mondays at 10:00 p.m. on ABC.