Sandy Cohen

Sandy has a mainly stable relationship with Kirsten and Seth, albeit with the occasional problem surfacing. Unresolved issues of trust and jealousy rise to the surface with regards to Kirsten's former childhood sweetheart, Jimmy Cooper, who is also their next-door neighbor in Season 1.

He leaves the Public Defender's Office to go into private practice at Patridge, Savage and Khan, along with his former colleague from the District Attorney's office, Rachel Hoffman. She causes tension between Sandy and Kirsten when Kirsten finds Sandy enjoying a drink with Rachel one night while he was supposed to be at a meeting. Later on, Sandy and Rachel get involved in a case against Caleb's company, the Newport Group. Both were accused by Caleb of having an affair because they had been spending a lot of time together and working very late. Not long afterwards, when Rachel and Sandy were working late in her apartment, she indeed makes a play for him, but he rejects her advances. He and Kirsten then attempt to set her up with the newly divorced Jimmy, to no avail.

Rebecca Bloom, an old flame of Sandy's, came back into their lives, causing difficulties between him and Kirsten. This contributed towards her growing alcohol problem, and the distance between her and Sandy caused her to almost have an affair with a magazine editor, Carter Buckley, although he left before anything happened. This came to a head when Kirsten's father, Caleb Nichol, died which caused Kirsten's drinking problem to run out of control, forcing the entire Cohen family (including Ryan) and Kirsten's sister Hailey to stage an intervention and put her in rehab.

He has had many new problems with the underhanded nature of business in the real estate world in his new job as CEO of the Newport Group. This once again has caused a strain on his home life, although the season three finale saw him making the decision to return to being a public defender after revisiting his old office and seeing what it was like.

In the fourth season, Sandy helps Ryan sort things out with Kevin Volchok, who was responsible for the death of Marissa and he was also the one who talks Ryan into helping Taylor, who was in the middle of a divorce from her French husband, Henri-Michel.

Later in the season, Sandy bumps into a man at the New Year's Eve party and investigates further. The man is revealed to be Ryan's father, Frank Atwood, whom Sandy meets. Frank wants to see Ryan, so Sandy tells Ryan who refuses. Frank tells Sandy that he has cancer so Kirsten invites him to dinner but Sandy is suspicious. It is later revealed Frank lied in a last-ditch attempt to see Ryan, prompting Sandy to punch him in front of everyone.

Sandy helps in the preparation for Kirsten's fortieth birthday. He finds a mail truck, exactly the same model as the one that both of them lived in Berkeley, while his real present to her was two first-class tickets around the world. When he tells a stunned Kirsten, she announces that she is having a baby. After an earthquake hits Newport Beach, Sandy finds Kirsten on the ground, and tries to help her up, but had difficulties because of the falling objects around them. At the hospital, Sandy and Kirsten discover that they are going to have a daughter.

Six months later, he and Kirsten move to Berkeley; back to the house where they had Seth. It is in this house that Seth and Ryan's sister, Sophie Rose, starts her life. In the flashforward set five years later, Sandy is now a law professor at UC Berkeley.