Mike “Pap” Papantonio didn’t set out to be a lawyer. He trained as a journalist, ready to chase revolutions abroad — until a conversation with the legendary Perry Nichols reframed the craft of trial work as storytelling grounded in literature, culture, and human truth. That idea stuck. So did Pap’s upbringing with working-class families across central Florida, people living paycheck to paycheck. It left him with a lifelong instinct to side with the underdog and, later, to build a career holding the most powerful institutions to account.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Pap explains the decision that has defined his practice: using the same law license as everyone else, but choosing higher-impact fights — cleaning up ecosystems, taking bad drugs off the market, getting “mom and pop’s money back” when Wall Street steals it. He rejects volume for significance. The goal is scale — of harm, of remedy, of cultural impact.
Mentorship runs through the narrative. From Nichols to Fred Levin, Pap learned that technical skill is necessary, but courage is decisive. “What holds lawyers back?” he asks. Too often, it’s fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of stepping outside the safe path shaped by credentials and country-club comfort. He contrasts the lawyer who sells “used cars” with the one who sells jets — harder, rarer, but transformative when it lands.
Pap revisits origin moments in mass torts: the first PFAS trials in Ohio, early results that some mocked as too modest — until verdict by verdict the science and momentum became undeniable, catalyzing what is now the largest toxic-tort litigation in the country. He talks candidly about the opioid wars and the $75 billion in settlements that followed disclosure of damning internal documents. He is equally unsparing about institutional failures — especially a Department of Justice that, in his view, too often refused to prosecute white-collar crime.
The conversation pivots to his novels — thrillers that read fast but educate quietly — including The Middleman, which indicts pharmacy benefit managers as “gangster” middlemen extracting kickbacks and inflating drug prices while hiding in plain sight. Corporate media won’t tell these stories, Pap argues, so trial lawyers have to.
Finally, he shares a communicator’s toolbox — the “Five C’s,” the power of visuals, and the discipline of radical simplicity — illustrated with iconic ads from Coke, Nike, and Apple that moved people without a single wasted word.
It all leads to his simple credo, the one that undergirds his firm’s culture at Levin Papantonio" do significant work that changes systems and lives, and the economics will follow. In his Closing Argument, Pap urges lawyers to overcome the fear of rejection and to align ambition with purpose — to “do well by doing good.”
· The highest-impact plaintiffs’ work prioritizes cultural change over case volume — choose the bigger fight, not just more files.
· Fear of rejection is the invisible limiter of legal careers; courage and teachability unlock growth.
· Early, “small” verdicts can be strategic beachheads that build science, narrative, and momentum in mass torts.
· Institutions often fail to police corporate wrongdoing — trial lawyers must sur
The Trial Lawyer's Journal is Presented by CloudLex and Lexvia.ai.
