Lefcourt's early career involved writing teleplays for primetime series such as Cagney and Lacey, Scarecrow and Mrs. King (both of which he also produced), Eight is Enough, and Remington Steele, among others.
He penned the scripts for the television movies Monte Carlo, Cracked Up, Danielle Steel's Fine Things, and The Women of Windsor.
Lefcourt was nominated for a 1984 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for Cagney and Lacey and won the following year.
His other novels are The Dreyfus Affair (1992), Di & I (1994), Abbreviating Ernie (1997), The Woody (1998), Eleven Karens (2003), The Manhattan Beach Project (2005), Le Jet Lag (2007), An American Family (2010) and Purgatory Gardens (2015).
In a 2012 interview with Larry Mantle on KPCC's Airtalk, Lefcourt stated he signed with Amazon.com to publish and distribute his most recent book "with some trepidation".