In most cases, attorneys count their successes in motions granted or denied, dollars won or lost and—when all goes right—the look of a satisfied client. But, in 2018, Mark Aronchick counted his successes by the length of the lines outside polling places across Pennsylvania, by the deluge of candidate yard signs, and by the number of children taking advantage of the city’s free pre-K programs.

In 2018, Aronchick, a longtime fixture in the Pennsylvania and national legal scene, played a leading role in two of the most significant and talked-about cases in Pennsylvania—if not the country. One of those cases dealt with the implementation of the first tax on sweetened beverages levied by a major U.S. city, and the other pushed to dismantle the state’s congressional map for being an unconstitutionally partisan gerrymander.