AZA Law Has Tried More Than 500 Cases Since Its 1993 Founding
AZA Law was founded in July 1993 by attorneys John Zavitsanos and Joe Ahmad. The two began trying cases almost immediately, according to a firm history the Houston litigation boutique published for its 20th anniversary. More than three decades later, the firm has tried more than 500 cases, according to the firm’s own count. That total spans state and federal courts across Texas.
The pace hasn’t held steady. AZA has been in trial nearly every month since 2016, according to the firm, but the year-by-year count still moved with the courts around it: 23 trials across 2018 and 2019 combined, six in 2020 when courthouses closed for the pandemic, then 27 across 2021 and 2022 once dockets reopened.
A Firm Built on Trial Volume
Trial volume of this magnitude creates a different breed of firm. A firm that tries cases nearly every month develops different instincts than one that settles most disputes before a jury or judge ever hears them. Jury selection gets sharper with repetition. So does the bench of lawyers who have actually stood in front of a courtroom, not just prepared for one.
Todd Mensing, a name partner at the firm, built part of that record personally: more than 60 cases tried over roughly 25 years of practice. Colleagues including Kyle Poelker, Tim Shelby, and John Zavitsanos added their own trial results throughout 2026. The docket spreads across multiple lawyers rather than concentrating in one. That spread matters for clients too: a firm whose trial work depends on one or two lawyers carries more risk if either becomes unavailable than one where the caseload already runs through half a dozen names.
Where the Trials Happen
Houston remained AZA Law’s only office for more than three decades before a Dallas office opened in early 2026. The firm’s litigation has run through venues across the state, from Harris County civil courts to the newly created Business Court of Texas. A trial count in the hundreds comes with a correspondingly wide record of judges, juries, and case types. That’s part of why individual results, wins and losses alike, tend to get folded into the firm’s larger trial-first identity instead of treated as isolated events. AZA Law’s docket also covers the full spectrum of industries and claims, a spread that keeps its trial lawyers moving between case types instead of narrowing into a single specialty.
Zavitsanos and Ahmad met at the University of Michigan Law School and started their careers at large Houston firms before they built their own trial practice in 1993, according to the same 20th-anniversary history. The two founding partners tried 14 jury trials in 1995 alone. They won 13. That pace helped establish the firm’s identity years before its trial count reached the hundreds it counts today, and it set a cultural expectation that later hires either embraced or found themselves out of step with. More than 30 years later, the expectation has apparently held. Few firms of AZA’s size keep that pace up for three decades without it becoming part of how they hire.
