Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

As part of The Legal's upcoming Professional Excellence supplement, which will publish June 12, we are pleased to announce the three finalists for the 2018 Attorney of the Year Award.

A judging panel composed of esteemed members of the Pennsylvania legal community and members of The Legal's editorial staff narrowed down nominees to three finalists and will name one winner from those three. The Legal will invite all three to be honored as part of an awards dinner June 21, and we will announce the winner that night. The identity of the winner will be kept secret until then.

The finalists for the 2018 Attorney of the Year Award are:

• Robert Mongeluzzi, Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesky — As lead plaintiffs attorney in the Salvation Army building collapse case, Mongeluzzi was a major force throughout the longest trial in Philadelphia history, which settled in February 2017 for $227 million, an amount plaintiffs counsel said was the largest-ever personal injury settlement out of a Pennsylvania state court.

• Sozi Tulante, former Philadelphia City Solicitor — Tulante's last full year as Philadelphia City Solicitor—he left the post earlier this year to join the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School—was an eventful one that saw his office take on one major legal battle after another. In May 2017, the Philadelphia Law Department sued Wells Fargo alleging discriminatory lending practices in the city. The following month, Tulante, with the help of attorneys from Dechert and Hogan Lovells, certified to the U.S. Department of Justice that Philadelphia was in compliance with federal law when it comes to sharing of immigration information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. In November, a federal judge granted the city's request to halt Attorney General Jeff Sessions from cutting off federal funding for the city's law enforcement as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on sanctuary cities. And, throughout the course of 2017, Tulante and his office continued to defend the city's sweetened beverage tax, which was upheld by the Commonwealth Court in June 2017 and is currently pending review by the state Supreme Court.

• Neelima Vanguri, Sidney L. Gold & Associates — Vanguri was instrumental in the first-of-its-kind transgender rights case Blatt v. Cabela's Retail, successfully arguing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that her client, a transgender employee of outdoor retailer Cabela's, should be allowed to move forward with a claim of Americans with Disabilities Act discrimination based on the condition of gender dysphoria. The May 2017 ruling, which denied Cabela's motion to dismiss the ADA claim, was widely lauded as a landmark victory for transgender rights and, as one advocate put it, “a huge step forward for the transgender community.”

The awards dinner will be held at the Crystal Tea Room in Philadelphia on June 27. Contact Andre Sutton at [email protected] or 757-721-9020 for more information.