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

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As a middle school track coach, she taught kids to breathe on the back stretch and relax their arms on the far turn. They won. More importantly, they believed in themselves.

Years later, a worn-down client sat across from her and, in a quiet handshake, asked a different question: Can I trust you? Ortega heard what wasn’t said and took an oath to care. That moment — that feeling — became her compass.

She describes the years spent “living someone else’s expectations,” checking feelings at the door, and chasing success by template. The turn came at Thunderhead Ranch, where the Gerry Spence Method demands lawyers first confront their own pain. Why? As Ortega puts it, "How can we sit in the ashes of someone else’s pain if we’ve never faced our own?" In that work, the scars she once hid became superpowers. Community followed, then craft — trial as an act of human connection, plain language over performance, a conversation with jurors rather than a lecture.

Her defining case — the road to Spence’s Civil Trial Warrior of the Year — centered on Mr. Curry, a sheriff’s deputy and pillar of his community who suffered a life-altering brain injury, neck surgeries, and dystonia after a head-on collision. Ortega left her firm, built her own practice, and bet everything on doing the case the right way. Nineteen defense experts. Endless motions. Delays engineered to exhaust a solo shop. Still, she and a small team pressed on, learned the science, found the story, and tried the case. The jury listened. Justice followed.

Why fight this hard? Because, Ortega says, settlement mills often leave clients on the “dirt track” even when they can afford the stadium track — and clients live with the pain long after the check clears. “Because when the money runs out, the pain will still be there…” That’s why she treats each client like family and why she insists on real healing — not just diagnoses but specialists, treatment, and dignity.

Ortega’s path is personal, too. Her family’s loss informs how she shows up for others. It also fuels her view of what makes a trial firm different: relentless investment of time, spirit, and resources to secure full justice.

In her "Closing Argument," Ortega reframes the job entirely: it’s never about the trial lawyer. It’s about listening to the client, then answering the jury’s real questions — the waiting-room questions: How bad is it? Will he be okay? What does this mean for his family? And it’s about honoring the sacrifice of teams and families who make the work possible. The calling, she says, is a life in service of others — lifting chins, pulling back shoulders, helping people believe in themselves again.

Learn more about Tanya at The Ortega Firm.

• Real trial craft starts with courageously examining your own pain so you can truly sit with a client’s.
• Jurors don’t want jargon; they want clear “waiting room” answers that speak to human stakes.
• Building a case means investing time, spirit, and resources — not defaulting to a settlement template.
• The right trial team and community are lifelines when the defense tries to delay, overwhelm, and exhaust.
• Healing matters alongside verdicts: connect clients with specialists and care that improve quality of life.
• Purpose beats business

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Michael Alder’s entry into plaintiff’s work wasn’t planned at all — it started in a tiny 700-person Louisiana town with preacher-teacher parents, took a surprising turn on a fraternity lawn, and ultimately led to a clerkship with a Mississippi Supreme Court justice who changed everything by sharing war stories after hours. That exposure to real trial practice, plus a single job offer from legendary med-mal lawyer Dave Harney in Los Angeles, set him firmly on the plaintiffs’ side.

Michael talks openly about getting fired, firms collapsing, and starting his own practice out of his house with one case while his then-wife’s entertainment law income kept them afloat. There was no “burning bush” moment — just necessity, training, and a willingness to try “anything that moved,” which led to eight, nine, ten-plus trials a year and a reputation built on reps, not branding.

“I’ve always felt like we all can rise together. I’m very much a true believer in giving unconditionally without asking anything back. It’s good life. It’s good karma. It’s good business. It’s just good.”

That philosophy underlies everything from his relationships with referring lawyers to his and his wife Gina’s heavy community work — from pro bono services for the Latino community to COVID food relief and rapid-response aid during the 2025 Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires.

He’s equally blunt about the damage done by mill and billboard firms that oversell injuries, pad demands with diagnoses they don’t understand, and leave clients with pennies on the dollar. That behavior, he says, feeds the dark defense narratives that portray plaintiffs, lawyers, and doctors as crooks — a tactic he faced head-on in a recent Santa Barbara trial where the defense opened by attacking “astronomical” asks.

For his "Closing Argument," Alder speaks directly to lawyers and staff about perspective. He urges firms to see frequent calls as signals of fear, not annoyance; to stop calling cases “dogs”; and to remember that “Obstacles are not in the way. Your ability to solve and get through those obstacles is the way to help the person who has relied on you to help them.”

Key Takeaways

- Building a successful plaintiff practice often comes from necessity, repetition, and saying yes to trial opportunities rather than from a perfect, pre-planned career path.

- Genuine generosity — handwritten notes, remembering personal details, showing up for community — can be a more powerful business driver than any billboard or ad campaign.

- Reframing “difficult” clients and cases through empathy and fiduciary duty turns frustration into purpose and leads to better outcomes for both clients and lawyers.

- Treating obstacles in a case as the actual work — not as an excuse to give up — is central to honoring the trust injured people place in their legal team.

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