The Legal Intelligencer Announces 2020 Professional Excellence Award Winners

The Legal Intelligencer

The Legal Intelligencer is pleased to announce the 2020 Professional Excellence Award winners. We are delighted to highlight the great work and achievements across the full breadth of the Pennsylvania legal community.

The Legal Intelligencer Professional Excellence honorees will be recognized in special editorial sections and at an awards dinner set for Sept. 9 at the Crystal Tea Room in Philadelphia.

Attorney of the Year Finalists

Brian McMonagle, McMonagle Perri — In 2019, McMonagle was involved in several high-profile matters, including representing indicted Philadelphia City Councilman Bobby Henon in a federal bribery case and defending Amtrak conductor Brandon Bostian against state criminal charges over the 2015 train derailment near Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. But perhaps the most widely publicized and closely watched case McMonagle handled in 2019 was that of multiplatinum hip-hop artist Meek Mill, whose legal battle first made national headlines in November 2017, when Philadelphia trial judge Genece Brinkley sentenced him to two-to-four years in prison for a probation violation, even though neither prosecutors nor his probation officer sought jail time. McMonagle was a key member of the legal team that, last July, successfully argued to the state Superior Court to grant the rapper a new trial and remove Brinkley from the case. A month later, Meek Mill went free after agreeing to plead guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor offense of carrying a firearm.

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