HOUSTON – National legal publication Law360 has again named AZA one of only five Texas powerhouse law firms which it says drive legal trends in Texas.  The firm is profiled by Law360 here: Texas Powerhouse: Ahmad Zavitsanos & Mensing (subscription required).

The 2026 Regional Powerhouses (subscription required) lists the state’s top five firms handling multimillion- and multibillion-dollar trials and transactions in federal, state and now the Texas business courts. Many of the big cases involved contractual disputes in energy, banking, tech and manufacturing sectors. 

“We have tried everything from toxic tort to catastrophic personal injury to breach of contract, … trade secret, patent infringement, copyright, banking cases. We’ve tried qui tam cases. I mean, literally anything and everything,” AZA managing partner John Zavitsanos told Law360. “No two days are ever going to be the same, and it forces you to stay on your toes and learn new things.”

Partner Todd Mensing told Law360: “What sets our firm apart in my mind, and which has been John’s vision that I fully endorse, is it’s born out of the idea of making a firm where what brings people together is not money. … The organizing principle behind our firm is being great and winning and doing a fabulous job for the client. And our view is after that, everything else will follow naturally.”

AZA was first named a powerhouse firm by Law360 in 2014. This year, in the time covered by the 2026 award, Law360 considered AZA victories that included:  

  • AZA took over a case in which Big Law stalled, saving global engineering giant Kellogg Brown & Root $289 million in a Harris County jury trial over a breach of contract allegation. 
  • In one of the first two Texas Business Court trials, AZA saved a pipeline client $200 million in a favored shipper contract case, although the judge did order AZA’s client to pay $1.
  • A Chambers County jury found in favor of AZA client Brown & Root Industrial Services in a more than $200 million trade secret case.
  • AZA obtained a key $123.7 million Winter Storm Uri force majeure win for Marathon Oil in a Southern District federal jury trial involving the delivery of natural gas during the February 2021 storm.
  • An Eastern District federal jury awarded AZA‘s client $78.5 million in a Samsung patent infringement case.  

The Law360 story ended with this note:

“Despite the growth in Texas’ business community and its attendant legal needs, the firm’s partners say they have no intention of entertaining offers to be acquired by any of what Zavitsanos describes as the ‘carpetbagger firms’ that have descended upon the state in a spate of business raids that he likens to ‘the sacking of Troy.’

‘Right now, we represent some far right-wing groups. We represent some far left-wing groups. We represent some companies that have taken some politically unpopular decisions. But all of them needed trial lawyers,’ Zavitsanos said. ‘We viewed those cases as very challenging. We were interested in trying those cases. We don’t want someone telling us who we can represent and who we can’t.’

‘We like our freedom,’ he added.”

Houston and Dallas trial boutique Ahmad Zavitsanos & Mensing, or AZA, has earned repeated recognition from Chambers USA among the best in Texas for our commercial law, intellectual property and appellate practices; the firm has been listed by Best Lawyers’ Best Law Firms as one of the country’s best commercial litigation firms for 13 years; has been named Litigation Department of the Year by Texas Lawyer three times; and was twice dubbed a Texas Powerhouse law firm by Law360.