Lindsay Lohan Nearing End to Long Legal Woes

Lindsay Lohan's protracted journey through the legal system neared an end Thursday when a judge gave her a glowing review and ended her probation stemming from a 2007 DUI case in Beverly Hills.

Lohan successfully met all the terms of her probation, including community service hours at the county morgue and therapy sessions, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner said. The actress will remain on probation for two more years on a case stemming from the theft of a necklace from a Venice jewelry store, but the judge reduced that to unsupervised, summary probation.

Lohan, 25, thanked the judge for "being fair."

"It's really opened a lot of doors for me, so I really appreciate it," she said.

In stark contract to some of Lohan's earlier court appearances, Sautner heaped praise on the actress and told her she controlled her future.

"I'm not going to give a lecture because you know what you need to do," the judge said. "You need to live your life in a more mature way, stop the night-clubbing and focus on your work. You don't need to come to court anymore."

Sautner noted that Lohan will remain on summary probation in the necklace-theft case until May 24, 2014, but added, "I don't expect to see you again."

The judge told the actress that the only terms of probation she is still facing are "to obey all laws."

"It's not that hard. I know it's kind of hard when people are following you all over the place ... but that's the life you chose," the judge said.

Lohan pleaded no contest May 11, 2011, to a misdemeanor grand theft charge involving a necklace priced at $2,500 that was pilfered from a Venice jewelry store.

She was placed on three years probation and ordered to spend 120 days in jail and complete the 480 hours of community service to which she had been previously sentenced for violating her probation in the 2007 misdemeanor DUI case.

The actress ran into trouble, however, when her attendance for community service work at a downtown women's shelter turned out to be sporadic, and shelter officials terminated her from the program. That prompted Sautner to revoke Lohan's probation.

The actress admitted violating her probation, and Sautner ordered her to spend 30 days in jail. But she ended up spending only five hours in jail because of overcrowding.

The judge then ordered Lohan to perform all of her community service work at the morgue, laid out a strict schedule of therapy sessions and community service hours, and ordered the actress to make monthly court appearances to ensure she stayed on track. She has received glowing reviews from the judge ever since.

While on a break on her last day at the morgue, where her work has involved no contact with corpses, Lohan said Wednesday she would never appear in front of another judge and doesn't plan to see much of her attorney, Shawn Holley, after today, the celebrity news website TMZ.com reported. She added she would celebrate tonight by going out to eat with her sister.

The star of such films as "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday," Lohan is in line to portray the late Elizabeth Taylor in a Lifetime film on basic cable, and she is expected to make a guest appearance on the hit Fox series "Glee." She recently hosted "Saturday Night Live" and posed for Playboy.