HOUSTON – Along with an esteemed group of lawyers, AZA managing partner John Zavitsanos has been named to the inaugural board for a bipartisan nonprofit group designed to add transparency and improve the quality of the Texas judiciary.
The nascent Center for the Advancement of Judicial Excellence has appointed Mr. Zavitsanos to the board with highly acclaimed lawyers Mo Lovett, David Beck, Ricardo Cedillo and Craig Enoch, who is also a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court.
“Texas voters need more guidance on which of their elected judges are performing well on their benches and which ones are falling short. This non-profit, non-partisan group is being developed by a cadre of lawyers who care deeply about the quality of the Texas judiciary and hope to offer voters more transparency,” Mr. Zavitsanos said.
The organization plans to compile and weigh objective judicial performance data and generate annual “grades” for district and appellate judges in Texas. The initiative will launch in Harris and Bexar counties, with planned expansion in subsequent years.
The grades are expected to be based on mandated judicial reporting, judicial decisions, including reversal rates and mandamus reversals, and comprehensive bar polling.
Houston and Dallas trial boutique Ahmad Zavitsanos & Mensing, or AZA, has earned repeated recognition from Chambers USA among the best in Texas in commercial law and intellectual property; 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 dubbed a Texas Powerhouse law firm by Law360.