John Zavitsanos is a highly 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 more than 100 cases to verdict in litigation that runs the gamut: financial services, oil and gas, construction, complex commercial disputes, director and officer liability, non-compete and trade-secret disputes, real estate development, and defamation/business disparagement. He is the primary author of O’Connor’s Texas Rules * Civil Trials 2018-2026, the premiere civil trial rules guide for Texas lawyers and judges and a contributing author of the ALM 6th Edition of Texas Business Litigation 2026.
He has learned from every jury trial by surveying the jurors after the case and learning what conventional wisdom has outlived its usefulness. That’s a lot of input, since he has tried more than a dozen cases in just the last few years
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.”
When interviewed by Chambers USA, clients described Mr. Zavitsanos as “a master of cross-examination.” Another noted, “I like his trial instincts and confidence. Not a lot of lawyers out there try cases as frequently as he does, and it shows. John loves being in the courtroom.” Thomson Reuters recognized him as a 2026 Stand-out Lawyer based on client feedback including: “He’s very creative, skilled, and he wins. He looks at a problem and he finds solutions that other people don’t find and ways to look at it that other people don’t see.” One client added, “He is one of the best trial lawyers in America.”
Mr. Zavitsanos’ considerable talents have been recognized by every possible legal rating service and his peers have recognized him as one of the premier trial lawyers in the state. For 25 consecutive years, he’s been listed by Best Lawyers in America. He is recognized for his General Commercial Litigation work in Texas by the highly respected Chambers USA. He is one of only a handful of lawyers in Texas to achieve a Band 1 ranking in both commercial litigation and trial expertise by the London based Chamber and Partners. In 2023, the National Law Journal identified Mr. Zavitsanos as one of the top 10 plaintiff lawyers in the USA. He was also named a Benchmark Litigation Star in 2016-2025. He is a Litigation Counsel of America (Senior Fellow) and was named on Lawdragon 500 leading lawyers in America lists for 2021- 2026 with a focus on commercial litigation, intellectual property, and securities.
He has achieved the highest possible peer rating, AV Preeminent, by Martindale-Hubbell, the premier legal directory, for his Business Litigation practice. He’s been named by his peers as one of the top 100 Texas Lawyers on the annual Texas Super Lawyers list for more than a decade. He was recently featured on the cover of Texas Super Lawyer magazine as one of only a handful of lawyers in Texas to be named a Super Lawyer every year since 2003. 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 2 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 was dubbed a “Texas Powerhouse” by the national online legal publication Law360.
In growing his firm to more than 60 lawyers, Mr. Zavitsanos has hired carefully. Many on his hardworking team are self-made people like himself, who had to work their way through school and managed to graduate from some of the best law schools in the country.
Early on, it was clear that Mr. Zavitsanos would be a trailblazer. In 1998, he tried to verdict in 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 month-long business tort case involving 1,000 exhibits that he managed to turn into a “paperless” trial by using the latest technology. It was the first such complex 100 percent paperless case in the Dallas district courts.
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.
Mr. Zavitsanos’ fast-paced trial practice has not stopped him from finding time to serve his community. Mr. Zavitsanos is a member of the national council of the Order of St. Andrew. Mr. Zavitsanos was recognized as an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church in 2004. An Archon is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a member of the laity within the worldwide Greek Orthodox Church. There are fewer than 750 Archons in the United States. In 2019 he received the Nicholas J. Bouras Award for Extraordinary Archon Stewardship. The Award is presented annually by the National Council of the Order of Saint Andrew to an individual who has demonstrated extraordinary and incomparable stewardship to the Order, empowering Archons to vigorously pursue securing religious freedom for the Mother Church of Constantinople.
He is on the national legal committee of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. In 2014 he was on a five-lawyer international team that represented the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. The Ecumenical Patriarchate successfully sued the government of Turkey and reclaimed an orphanage it had owned since 300 A.D. just outside of Istanbul. The victory over this largest wooden structure in all of Europe was unanimous and precedent setting. He is also a member of a select committee established in 2019 by the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, a group originally formed to combat the KKK. The committee is tasked with identifying stolen Greek treasures in museums and seeking compensation for Greece.
He was named a Houston Bar Foundation Director in 2026. Also in 2026 he became a board member for the Center for Advancement of Judicial Excellence. He has served as a board member of the Houston Lawyer Referral Service and has worked on a number of pro bono cases over the years, including working on a prisoner abuse case that involved (at that time) one of the largest settlements with the state of Texas in Texas history for a single plaintiff. Mr. Zavitsanos also was a board member of the Menil Art Museum’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel in Houston. Mr. Zavitsanos has been married for over 25 years and has four children.
Prior to forming the firm in 1993 with Joseph Ahmad, Mr. Zavitsanos was with the Houston office of Baker & Botts, L.L.P. in their trial department. While at Baker Botts, Mr. Zavitsanos tried many cases and obtained a verdict in excess of $1 million as lead trial counsel during only his third year of practice.
Mr. Zavitsanos’ authorship and presentations at seminars include:
