Lawdragon’s 2026 guides recognized lawyers across the Houston and Dallas trial boutique Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing in three separate categories, with Todd Mensing named to the energy list. Read together, the three lists do more than collect honors. They map where the firm’s trial work concentrates, where it is recognized at a national level, and how it is positioning the lawyers who will carry its caseload over the next decade.
Lawdragon occupies a specific place among legal directories. Where some rankings lean on submissions or self-nomination, Lawdragon builds its lists through journalistic reporting, peer and client nominations, and vetting with experts in each field. The result rewards demonstrated work and reputation rather than a single metric, which is why a firm appearing on several Lawdragon lists in one year says more than topping any one of them. For Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, 2026 produced three.
The Energy List
Lawdragon named five AZA trial lawyers to its 500 Leading Global Leaders in Energy for 2026: John Zavitsanos, Todd Mensing, Tim Shelby, Cameron Byrd, and Paul Turkevich. Mensing, who focuses on complex commercial litigation, has built much of his recent trial record in energy disputes, and the recognition tracks that work directly.
One example is the SilverBow Resources case. A McMullen County jury returned $41.8 million in 2023 against an Energy Transfer affiliate, finding that hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide injected into a disposal well had trespassed on the mineral estates of SilverBow Resources and El Dorado Gas & Oil. Mensing served as lead trial counsel, and the award landed among the National Law Journal’s top 100 verdicts for the year. He has described the trial’s turning point as the moment his team broke the defense’s reliance on its subsurface modeling. “The first big crack was when we got their experts to admit that their models do not reflect the real world. And it was that stark,” Mensing told The Texas Lawbook.
Energy litigation in Texas runs across a wide field: mineral and royalty disputes, midstream contract fights, subsurface trespass, regulatory and force majeure questions, and the contract claims that follow events like Winter Storm Uri. A trial boutique with five lawyers on a global energy list is not riding one verdict. It reflects a practice that runs from upstream operators through midstream disputes and into the courtroom, the part of energy law where AZA does most of its work. For clients in the sector, the breadth matters as much as any single name, because energy disputes often turn on the same trial-team depth the list recognizes.
The Intellectual Property List
Lawdragon also named five AZA lawyers to its 500 Leading Global IP Lawyers for 2026: partners Jason McManis, Warren McCarty, and Weining Bai, and associates Louis Liao and Colin Phillips. The intellectual property group is the firm’s second major trial practice, and Chambers USA rated it again in 2026, the sixth year in a row, praising the team’s “comprehensive understanding of the patent litigation landscape.”
Patent and trade secret cases sit alongside energy disputes as the two areas where AZA most often takes matters to verdict. The firm has tried patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas, a venue that has long drawn a high volume of intellectual property litigation, particularly in its Marshall and Tyler divisions. Patent trials reward a particular combination of skills: the technical fluency to make a complex invention legible to a jury, and the trial instincts to keep that explanation from turning tedious. Five lawyers from a single boutique appearing on a global IP list signals that the firm has built that combination across a group rather than concentrating it in one practitioner.
The IP recognition also rounds out the picture of the firm’s docket. Energy and intellectual property disputes share a structural feature: both turn on expert testimony that a jury or judge has to be walked through carefully, and both reward trial teams that have done it before. A firm recognized in both is being recognized for the same underlying capability applied to two different bodies of law.
The Next Generation List
The third recognition looks forward rather than back. Lawdragon named seven AZA lawyers to its 2026 “500 X: The Next Generation,” a list built around younger attorneys the directory identifies as rising in their fields.
Seven selections on a next-generation list is the most telling of the three for a firm’s trajectory. Trial practice depends on succession in a way that transactional practice does not. A first-chair trial lawyer is made through repetitions that take years to accumulate, and those repetitions have grown scarce as civil jury trials decline across Texas and the federal courts. A boutique that keeps at least one matter in active trial in nearly every month has an answer to that scarcity, because its younger lawyers get courtroom time that peers at settlement-oriented firms rarely see.
The next-generation recognition suggests the pipeline is working. A firm that depended on a handful of senior names would show up on lists like the energy and IP guides but not on a list measuring the lawyers coming up behind them. Seven names on the Next Generation list points to a bench being built rather than a reputation being maintained, which is the harder and more durable accomplishment for a trial firm.
Why the Full Firm Name Carries the Honors
The three lists attach to the firm as a whole, Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, rather than to any single practitioner. That distinction matters for how clients read the recognition. A name partner’s individual ranking reflects one lawyer’s record. A firm appearing across energy, IP, and next-generation lists in the same year reflects an institution with depth in its core practices and a plan for continuity.
Mensing’s place on the energy list connects the firmwide recognition to a specific verdict record. He is a name partner whose docket of energy and commercial trials anchors much of AZA’s reputation in the practice area, and his Lawdragon energy selection arrived the same year Chambers USA elevated him to Band One in general commercial litigation for Texas. Two independent directories reaching aligned conclusions in the same year, one for energy and one for general commercial litigation, reinforce rather than repeat each other.
What Recognition Lists Do and Do Not Measure
No directory ranking substitutes for a track record, and Lawdragon does not claim to. What the lists measure is the judgment of peers, clients, and the directory’s own reporting about who is doing the most significant work in a field. That judgment can lag a strong year or miss a rising lawyer, which is why no single list is decisive.
The value for a firm is cumulative. A single recognition can reflect one good stretch. Energy, intellectual property, and next-generation honors arriving together describe something steadier: depth in the practices that generate the firm’s verdicts, and a generation of lawyers being trained to keep generating them. For Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, the 2026 Lawdragon results read less like a set of individual awards than a portrait of a trial firm at full strength across the work it does most, with the people in place to carry it forward.
