Cliff Nelson

 And exit Cliff Nelson...a good 5 year run! He started as an aggressive assistant DA,heavily pushing for Winter Austen's guilty verdict. He mellowed out a bit after, liking Deborah Saxon but ended up just amking himself a pest. He was later forced by Logan to prosecute Draper and won, which was a bitter victory. Tiring of the thankless job of prosecuting, he sought a position with Mike Karr to practice civil law.

A golden opportunity came when Logan needed strong counsel to win custody of Jamey from Raven, unknowingly getting the key evidence to win from a nudie mag in Elliot Dorn's office. Ever the loudmouth still, he bragged that he knew who killed Elliot and was soon the victim of a stabbing (Henry Slesar considerd killing him off but changed his mind). After recovering, he was invited to join Draper as a partner in the law firm when Mike became the new D.A., often handling things himself as Draper was helping April piece together who the real father of Emily's baby was.

After Draper left for Europe, he was the lone lawyer in the firm for a short bit before agreeing to share office space with new and idealistic attorney Didi Bannister. . They proved to be a good team, Didi pumping fresh energy into Cliff while Cliff helped her to rein in her idealism when common sense was required. Wanting a date for the opening of the Whitney Theater's dance revue, Cliff impulsively asked ditzy waitress and aspiring actress Mitzi Martin to accompany him. After a rough start, they became quite a cute if silly couple. Mitzi soon found a brand new acting school led by Jim Dedrickson. Cliff joined and got some good acting strategies to hopefully use in court when he defended Gavin Wylie. When real killer Sky Whitney (really Jeff Brown) was proven to be the killer.

Cliff and Mitzi were excited to be part of Jim's theater group when Raven let the group use the Whitney Theater...that is until Raven found out that Gavin was part of it and she kicked them all out. She also had Cliff fired from one of his biggest clients because he wouldn't fake a will to make sure she got all of her husband's millions. Therefore it was not hard for Smiley Wilson to convince him to be part of a practical joke framing Raven for murder. It was all fun until Cliff saw that Smiley wanted to take things too far, and Smiley removed Cliff from the proceedings. Not long after, Jim panicked that some real harm could come to Raven so he spilled all to Mike Karr, putting Cliff as well as Calvin Stoner in legal trouble for their participation. Even after Jim rescued Raven from a crazed and murderous Smiley, things were still up in the air until the real Sky Whitney's identity was proven and Raven was too distracted to proceed with suing her tormentors.

Cliff soon assisted Didi in defending her brother Troy for murdering crooked cop Ted Loomis, though it was in self defense. Troy was acquitted when mobster Eddie Lorimer confessed to the police that Ted Loomis had conspired with mob henchman Joe Bulmer to kill Troy. Cliff was also consoling Mitzi after she was hit by a car driven by crazy and jealous Nora Fulton. Speaking of which, after Nora was killed in the WMON studio, Cliff and Didi represented Nicole Cavanaugh, who would not budge from her confession of murder despite growing evidence she was lying. Cliff also had to contend with Gunther Wagner, who had romantic designs on Mitzi. Cliff thought Gunther might have killed Nora and also in a moment of desperation accused Sky Whitney...but once again Cliff provided a key to solve the case and Sky Whitney had all the key players reenact Nora's murder to show that CEA double agent David Cameron had done it. A drunken Cliff in a celebratory moment proposed to Mitzi but took it back the next day. Mitzi ran away for time and Cliff decided to run her restaurant the Rock Garden, to disastrous results. Mitzi returned and, moved by Cliff's intentions and efforts, reconciled with him.

Bored with their old office, Cliff and Didi found new offices in the newly opened ISIS building. It was a dream at first until Didi started acting paranoid and irrational and violent. Seeing Alf Mayhew's body falling and then witnessing security chief Donald Hext switching suicide notes put Cliff in a dangerous position. After surviving a murder attempt via gas poisoning, Cliff went into hiding and then dared to invade the ISIS building at night, dodging Hext and Louis Van Dine's manhunt until he got himself locked in Van Dine's multimedia torture room. After weeks of losing his mind, a severely mentally wounded Cliff was rescued by Gunther when Gunther, Sky, Miles, and Derek raided the ISIS building and stopped Van Dine.

It took some intense therapy from Dr. Beth Correll, but Cliff finally began to show emotions again, having a breakthrough after laughing uncontrollably at Shellley Franklyn's selfish histrionics. After that, Cliff and Didi took on their paralegal Marty's grandfather's case of stolen burial grounds. It was a tough case as grandfather Standing Elk held many secrets that stymied Cliff and Didi. Sky and Raven pursued the case even after being fired by Standing Elk and found out the secrets on their own, and helping Cliff and Didi to win the case. Cliff had been offered a prestigious position in Capitol City and had been allowed to finish the Standing Elk case. He wanted Mitzi to join him, but she had grown a lot on her own and knew the two had no solid future together.

Cliff began as more or less a bulldog attorney, but soon evolved into a merely pushy and occasional goofball character who provided some comic relief to balance the drama.