John Zavitsanos

John Zavitsanos is a nationally regarded trial lawyer who loves trying cases and loves winning. He has achieved success for a multitude of clients – both defendants and plaintiffs, from big energy companies to lone whistleblowers battling the odds.

He has tried nearly 100 cases to verdict in litigation that runs the gamut: financial services, oil and gas, construction, complex commercial disputes, director and officer liability, noncompete and trade secret disputes, and catastrophic personal injury.

Using his own cutting-edge, courtroom research, he knows what works with juries. And his willingness – delight, actually – at trying a case with confidence has impressed numerous heavyweight clients. As one happy customer put it, “I find that many large law firms are willing to capitulate too quickly and pressure me to settle too soon.” He said he knows that Mr. Zavitsanos is “serious about going to trial.”

Mr. Zavitsanos’ considerable talents have been recognized by every possible legal rating service. For 13 consecutive years, he’s been listed by Best Lawyers in America. He’s recognized for his General Commercial Litigation work in Texas by the highly respected Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, published by London-based Chambers and Partners.

Mr. Zavitsanos' skills are exemplified by the recognitions he received in 2021. These include: two of the Top 100 Verdicts in 2021, The Trailblazer Award by Law360 (only one person per state received this recognition), and Law360's Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar (only 12 people nationally received this recognition. John is the only lawyer in Texas to receive this recognition in 2021).

He has achieved the highest possible peer rating, AV Preeminent, by Martindale-Hubble, the premier legal directory, for his Business Litigation practice. He’s been named one of the top 100 Lawyers on the annual Texas Super Lawyers list for the past seven years. And he is Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by both the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and the National Board of Trial Advocacy, an accomplishment held by less than 1 percent of all practicing lawyers in the state of Texas.

Mr. Zavitsanos co-founded the firm with Joe Ahmad in 1993 in a creaky building with a leaky roof. From that beginning, they built a firm that in 2014 was dubbed a “Texas Powerhouse” by the national online legal publication Law360.

In growing his firm to almost 60 lawyers, Mr. Zavitsanos has hired carefully. Many on his hardworking team are self-made people who had to work their way through school – backgrounds similar to his own. Nearly all AZA lawyers have been actively involved in trial.

Early on, it was clear that Mr. Zavitsanos would be a trailblazer. In 1998, he tried to verdict what is believed to be the first same sex harassment case, recovering more than $1 million in damages and fees for his client. In 2002, he won a complex business tort involving 1,000 exhibits that he managed to turn into a “paperless” trial by using the latest technology.

Since then, the firm has stacked up increasingly bigger wins in disputes involving hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. A particularly tangible example of the firm’s success came in 2009 when the general counsel of National Oilwell Varco, a company that had lost a trial to Zavitsanos a year earlier, hired the firm. “It was the first and only time I’ve ever hired a law firm that had beaten us in court,” the GC said.

As another major energy client summed it up, Mr. Zavitsanos brings “a plaintiff’s perspective in every case - including defense cases” and is “never afraid to take a case to trial.”