Resurrecting Aesop: Fables Lawyers Should Remember

by Mike Papantonio

Aesop's fables clearly were not written to entertain children. His stories about the adventures and misadventures of lions, birds, donkeys, and wolves ask us to make important choices between such things as greed and giving, arrogance and humility, selfish indifference and compassion. Lawyers are the types of leaders that can benefit from Aesop's fable wisdom. We can take that wisdom and help lead our clients, our community ... maybe even an entire democracy to the high ground that Aesop believed was so difficult to claim.

Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

MIKE PAPANTONIO is an American trial lawyer, television presenter, radio talk show host, and author. He is a senior partner with Levin Papantonio, one of America’s largest plaintiffs’ law firms, and was one of the youngest inductees into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame. He has aggressively taken on Big Pharma, tobacco, corporate polluters, and weapons manufacturers, among other bastions of corporate greed, and uses his own cases as springboards for his seven-book series of legal thrillers featuring Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis.

Mike was featured in the Academy Award-nominated documentary Jesus Camp (2006) and in the award-winning documentary Oxy Kingpins (2021), about how a network of pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and retailers worked together to orchestrate and perpetuate the opioid crisis that has killed over half a million people in America. He was also featured in The Devil We Know (2018), which highlighted the dangers of DuPont’s man-made chemical C8 and was adapted into the Hollywood blockbuster film Dark Waters (2019), starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, and Tim Robbins. And he was a key figure in Beyond Pollution (2012), regarding the truth behind the largest man-made natural disaster in history, the BP Oil Spill.

Mike’s most recent legal thriller is A Death in Arcadia, inspired by the infamous Dozier School for Boys. It will be published in March 2026.