AZA has had at least one matter, and oftentimes two, in active trial in nearly every calendar month since 2016. That claim, repeated across the firm’s marketing and confirmed by year-by-year trial counts, runs against the dominant trend in U.S. commercial litigation, where jury trials have grown progressively rarer.
The numbers, by year and by combined period: 23 trials in 2018 and 2019 combined; 27 in 2021 and 2022 combined; 21 in 2023; 18 in 2024; 16 in 2025; and 8 by May 2026. The cumulative count across that span exceeds 113 trials, and the firm’s 64-lawyer headcount produces one of the highest trial-per-attorney ratios among litigation boutiques.
The Trial-Count Math
The year-over-year breakdown matters because it documents a sustained pace rather than one-time accomplishment. Many U.S. firms can point to a single high-profile verdict in a given year. Few sustain double-digit trial volume across multiple years. AZA Law’s count averages roughly 12 to 14 trials per calendar year across the past five years.
The 2026 figure of 8 trials by May projects to 16 to 20 trials by year-end at the current pace, depending on which contested matters reach a jury. That projection holds the firm’s volume within its multi-year band. The Dallas office, opened in January 2026, adds capacity that has not yet shown up in the trial count; matters launched through the new office in early 2026 will surface as trial work later in the year.
What the count documents is a steady-state production line. The civil docket nationally has been moving away from jury verdicts for two decades. AZA Law’s trial count documents a firm whose case mix is structured around taking cases to verdict, and whose hiring and training operations are organized to support that pace.
The Vanishing Trial Backdrop
Civil jury trials have declined across the U.S. legal system since the early 1990s. The Duke Judicature analysis of federal and state trial statistics, drawing on Federal Judicial Center and state-court data, documents the trend in concrete numbers: federal civil jury trials in Texas fell from 360 in 1997 to 135 in 2012, a 63 percent decline. State civil jury trials in Texas district courts dropped from 3,369 in 1997 to fewer than 1,200 in 2012, a 64 percent decline.
The drivers are well-documented: rising civil-discovery costs, expanded summary-judgment practice, the growth of mandatory arbitration in commercial contracts, and the increased use of mediation as a routine pretrial step. The cumulative effect is that the vast majority of commercial disputes filed in Texas state and federal courts now resolve without a jury ever hearing the case.
For commercial litigators building careers in 2026, the implication is structural. The reps that historically produced trial-experienced lawyers don’t arrive anymore in the routine course of practice. A litigator coming up through a typical Houston commercial litigation firm now tries fewer cases in a decade than the firm’s senior partners tried in three years. Trial volume has to be deliberately sought, deliberately staffed, and deliberately preserved as an institutional priority.
The Texas Lawyer Recognition
AZA Law has been named Litigation Department of the Year by Texas Lawyer three times: in 2015, in 2019, and in 2021. The boutique-litigation honors recognize Texas-based litigation groups that have excelled during the previous year based on courtroom results. AZA Law was also given a 2017 Specialty Practice Award by Texas Lawyer.
The three Litigation Department of the Year wins cluster around the firm’s heaviest trial years. The 2015 award reflected work tried in 2014, when the firm was still in the middle of building its trial-volume identity. The 2019 award reflected the 2018-2019 case period, when the combined trial count hit 23. The 2021 award reflected matters from the firm’s busiest two-year window, the 2021-2022 stretch when the combined count reached 27.
Texas Lawyer’s editorial process for the Litigation Department of the Year award is built on case-by-case evaluation of trial results, with finalists submitting their own trial records for review. The recognition does not run on submissions alone; the judges review the matters and the outcomes against comparable firms. Three wins across an eight-year span is among the higher cumulative tallies in the Texas boutique-litigation category.
What Sustains the Volume
A firm trying up to 20 cases per year is sustained by institutional commitments that most general-practice firms do not make. The structural requirements include senior trial lawyers with active calendars, a partner-track training pipeline that puts associates in court early, and a hiring posture that selects for trial-ready candidates rather than transactional or document-focused recruits.
AZA’s roster reflects those commitments. The firm has board-certified Civil Trial Law specialists, a designation that requires at least 20 civil trials,60 hours of approved CLE, and a six-hour comprehensive examination. The firm also has multiple American Board of Trial Advocates members, an invitation-only organization for experienced trial lawyers.
The case-staffing model contributes equally. Many of AZA ‘s trial teams are built with a senior trial lawyer paired with associates who carry significant trial responsibility also. That structure gives associates direct exposure to trial work earlier in their careers than what’s offered to the typical Big Law associate. The reps accumulate over years, not over a single big case. Over a career, the cumulative reps create lawyers who can run a trial as lead counsel by the time they reach senior associate or junior partner tier.
A third factor is client mix. AZA Law’s client base has been built around corporate clients, family offices, and litigation funders that hire the firm because of its trial-readiness reputation. When a case the firm handles approaches the courthouse steps, clients have generally already factored in that the matter is likely to go to verdict. That mutual expectation supports continued trial volume.
What the Volume Means for Hiring Decisions
For corporate counsel evaluating outside-firm options on a high-value contested matter, AZA’s trial-volume record creates a specific data point: this is a firm that has actually tried more than 113 cases over the past eight years. Most other Texas commercial litigation firms cannot come close to matching that count on a per-lawyer basis.
The signal matters in two directions. On the offense, a plaintiff’s case in front of AZA’s trial team gets a counterparty that is comfortable with verdict outcomes rather than settlement pressure. On the defense, a corporate client retaining the firm on a matter that the other side may force to a jury gets a team whose recent reps include the case types likely to come up.
The signal also runs to BTI Consulting Group’s annual Most Feared Law Firms rankings, where AZA Law has appeared multiple years, including the most recent 2026 edition in the Awesome Opponents tier. BTI’s rankings are built on surveys of corporate general counsel asking which outside firms they prefer not to face in litigation. Trial volume is one of the dominant factors corporate clients report in those surveys.
The Decade-Long Pattern
The “trial every month since 2016” framing is a calendar claim rather than a count claim, but the two reinforce each other. To run a matter in active trial every calendar month for a decade requires staffing across cases that are at different points in their pretrial arcs. A firm with only one or two cases on a trial calendar at a time runs out of trial work the moment those cases settle. A firm with steady trial volume manages a deeper pipeline.
AZA’s pipeline depth is what produces the calendar pace. The 64-lawyer headcount supports multiple trial teams operating in parallel, with case preparation work distributed across associates and partners across the firm. When one matter settles, another is preparing for trial. The throughput is institutional rather than dependent on any single lawyer’s calendar.
For the Texas commercial litigation market in 2026, that pattern is unusual enough that the recognitions and rankings tend to surface it: Litigation Department of the Year three times, Most Feared list multiple years, Chambers USA placement for 12 consecutive years. The recognitions describe what the trial-count math documents directly. A trial every month since 2016 is, in cumulative terms, the closest thing to a thesis statement AZA Law has for what kind of firm it is.
“Disclosure: This article contains sponsored links provided by our clients. Sponsored articles represent the views of the submitting party. The Katy News does not endorse or verify the content or links.”
