The Houston Business Journal named the AZA Law Firm the fastest-growing law firm among the region’s middle-market companies in its 2026 rankings, placing it 14th overall by two-year revenue growth across every industry the publication surveyed. The list ran across construction, design, plastics, architecture, engineering, hotels, and law, and a Houston trial boutique landed near the top of it.
The number behind the ranking is $74 million in 2025 revenue. The firm now employs close to 70 lawyers and roughly 100 people in total, and it opened a Dallas office in early 2026, its first location outside Houston after more than three decades as a single-office shop. AZA was founded in 1993.
Growth built on trials, not avoidance of them
What makes the ranking notable is the model that produced it. Most large commercial litigation grows by managing risk, steering clients toward settlement and billing the long runway of discovery and motion practice that precedes it. AZA’s managing partner pointed to the opposite approach when the ranking came out.
“We’re a law firm that actually goes to trial constantly, and despite lamentations about the death of jury trials, we’ve grown steadily and substantially since our humble beginnings in 1993,” said John Zavitsanos, who co-founded the firm with Joe Ahmad.
“Our core value is going to trial and being the best at it,” said Todd Mensing, AZA’s other name partner. “That core value creates a spectrum of benefits. Our young lawyers try cases early and often, meaning our bench is deeper firms. Opponents know we will not hesitate to try the case, which creates leverage for our clients. And there is the most obvious point–because we try a lot of cases, we are very good at it and achieve exemplary trial results other firms cannot.”
That claim is testable against the firm’s own trial calendar. AZA has kept at least one matter in active trial in nearly every month since 2016, and in some months more than one. A roughly 70-lawyer firm trying cases at that cadence runs against the broader direction of commercial litigation, where arbitration clauses, discovery costs, and routine mediation have pulled most disputes away from courtrooms. The growth figure suggests the trial habit has become a business advantage rather than a drag on it.
A new court, and an early lead in it
Part of the recent story runs through the Texas Business Court, the specialized forum the Legislature created for complex commercial disputes. Mensing tied the firm’s growth to that venue directly.
“We even won the first two trials in the newly formed Texas Business Courts, where a lot of the complex commercial litigation in the state is migrating,” he said.
The point carries weight for a firm marketing itself to corporate clients. High-dollar contract and business-tort cases are increasingly routed to the Business Court, and a firm that won the first trials held there has a credential no competitor can claim. For general counsel deciding where to send a bet-the-company dispute, early wins in the venue that will hear the case matter more than a general reputation for litigation.
How the Houston Business Journal built the list
The ranking was not open to every firm. The Houston Business Journal limited it to companies that had operated for at least five years, generated between $28 million and $1 billion in revenue in their most recent completed fiscal year, and maintained headquarters in one of ten Texas counties: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, San Jacinto, or Waller. Nonprofits and governmental entities were excluded.
Those criteria put AZA in a field measured purely on revenue growth, against companies in capital-intensive industries that can scale headcount and contracts quickly. A professional services firm, where growth depends on adding senior lawyers and winning larger matters rather than building inventory or facilities, ranking 14th overall is a different kind of result than a manufacturer posting the same percentage.
The recognition record around the growth
The HBJ ranking sits alongside a longer recognition history. AZA has been listed by Best Lawyers’ Best Law Firms among 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 firm by Law360. Chambers USA rated the firm for the 13th consecutive year in 2026, recognizing its commercial litigation, intellectual property, and, for the first time, appellate practices.
Those honors measure quality as judged by clients and peers. The Houston Business Journal ranking measures something else: the commercial outcome of the firm’s choices. A shop that tries cases, opened a second office, and grew revenue to $74 million is being recognized not for how it litigates but for how the litigation has translated into a growing business.
What the Dallas office signals
The expansion to Dallas reframes the growth as durable rather than a single good stretch. AZA spent 32 years in one city before adding a second office, and it did so as patent and complex commercial work in North Texas gave a Houston trial firm a reason to plant a flag closer to the Eastern District of Texas docket and the growing Dallas commercial caseload.
A firm that grows by trying cases faces a natural ceiling: trials consume senior-lawyer time, and a boutique cannot scale the way a transactional practice can. AZA’s answer has been to add lawyers, open a market, and keep the trial pace rather than dilute it. The Houston Business Journal ranking is the scoreboard reading at the midpoint of that effort. The firm built a business on the one thing most of its competitors avoid, and the revenue line followed.
