Claire Poole, the veteran deal journalist and creator of the Corporate Deal Tracker Roundup, is leaving The Texas Lawbook. Today is her last day.
After nearly four decades pursuing M&A scoops from Texas to New York to Mexico, she is retiring from the grind of daily journalism to pursue her own writing projects and enjoy empty-nester life with her husband, Ron Auchter.
That’s the news, as pithy and unadorned as Claire herself might prefer it. But as her Lawbook editor and occasional collaborator, I rise to a point of personal privilege here. Several, in fact.
The Lawbook’s online profile of Claire notes that she joined us in 2017, scripting her as “a business writer based in Houston.”
Sure, and Oprah Winfrey is a former talk show host based in Chicago. Mark Cuban is a businessman based in Dallas. Taylor Swift is a singer known for dating an NFL football player.
Two true stories:
Claire was hired by The Lawbook shortly after I took a position as senior editor. I had returned to Dallas. Claire lived in Houston. The two of us were scheduled to visit a few law firms to introduce ourselves as part of The Lawbook to a handful of transactional lawyers.
Claire was late, stuck in Houston traffic, and having recently retired as editor and publisher of the ABA Journal, I figure I can hold my own with a few lawyers while she navigates her way. Into the meeting pops a very well-known dealmaker. He glances around the room and, not seeing Claire, proceeds to explain to me my new role in life.
“I was told Claire was going to be here,” he nearly sputtered. “Where is she? I cut off an important call to see her.”
At an earlier stop for coffee, I’d met with a large law firm marketing director. He’d been thrilled to hear that The Lawbook had hired Claire. Having lavished praise for the move, he then asked a “personal favor.”
“Would you tell her to please try to not call me at 6:00 o’clock in the morning to confirm a scoop? I’ve got kids to get out the door for school.” It was, he later acknowledged, a futile request. Claire was too good, too determined — as a person and a journalist — not to be the first to report something of substance that no one else seems to know.
“Claire is a pillar of Texas deal making journalism,” explains Hillary Holmes, a partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Houston. “She has always been thoughtful and respectful in her reporting. Claire captured the deals and insights on the marketplace in a way only a keen interviewer with real passion could.”
Before joining The Lawbook, Claire spent 16 years at The Deal, where she covered mergers and acquisitions and private equity investments, mostly in the energy sector. Before that, she worked as a staff writer at Forbes. She was writing for major publications about oil and gas deals — a space fully dominated by men — and wrote about the rise of women in dealmaking as it happened, not as she might wish it would. It was a very singular role, noticed by Holmes, herself a pioneer in the energy dealmaking space.
“I appreciate that Claire used her public platform to support women dealmakers and highlight their accomplishments — all for the sake of reporting on what they had done and the clients they had guided, not for the sake of their gender. I will miss reading Claire’s stories and sharing excitement over a completed deal with her,” Holmes said.
Sarah McLean echoes that experience. Claire, she said, approached her at a NAPE convention (North Ameican Prospect Expo).
“She was the first reporter who had ever approached me — and still the only one who has ever approached me in person,” said McLean, a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher. “She introduced herself and asked me what I thought of the M&A market and deal market, and I was honestly shocked that she, or anyone, would be interested in what I thought.”
In April 2018, McLean was with Shearman & Sterling when she led the Texas Lawbook’s M&A league tables in deal count, a first for a woman dealmaker. In reporting the story for The Lawbook, Claire quoted a Beyoncé tune to describe that singular event:
Who run the world? According to Houston-born pop singer Beyoncé, girls.
“It gave me street cred with my kids,” says McLean. “I don’t think Claire actually compared me to Beyoncé in the article, but my daughter (who is now 21) still calls me the Beyoncé of law.”
Claire’s personal and professional experience, however, has ranged far beyond the bounds of M&A. She’s written from New York City and Mexico City, having majored in journalism and Spanish in college. Her resume is full of the most familiar publications: Money, Crain publications, The Street, and Texas Monthly, among the many. She’s written about TV shows and bankrupt restaurateurs; about self-help books and art cars; about charter schools, billionaires and used-to-be billionaires.
Once with The Lawbook, her impact was immediate. She established a weekly summary of Texas deal activity that set a tone, a pace and a near-instant reputation for its heady reporting of complex topics, its thorough notes on representation and, quite often, its knowledge of personal track records and the relationships that make deals work.
“No one has a deeper knowledge and understanding about M&A activity and dealmakers in Texas than Claire,” said Lawbook Founder Mark Curriden. “From the moment Claire joined The Lawbook in July 2017, she made us a better newspaper. It has been an incredible privilege to have Claire as a colleague.”
The Lawbook likes numbers, so here are a few about the column. In the seven years since its introduction, the column has logged 5,330 deal summaries across 359 weeks, during which the column outlined the work of individual lawyers 43,701 times. It’s a staggering amount of work for anyone.
“Claire is unique among legal journalists for her deep understanding of the transactional legal market, including the drivers of the massive influx of global and national firms to Texas over the past decade,” said Robert Cardone, a partner at A&O Shearman.
Often, those relationships included the trust of others in her.
“Claire is a warming, engaging and intellectually curious person who quickly earns people’s respect and trust – two essential traits for a journalist,” says Alain Dermarkar, a partner at A&O Shearman in Dallas. “She successfully leveraged those traits to gain a key place in the Texas legal universe as a trusted source of information and knowledge.”
“I knew that anything I told Claire would be accurately disseminated, or that if something was ‘off the record’, it would stay that way. That is invaluable,” Dermarkar said.
McLean says she experienced that same thoughtful treatment.
“I always found her knowledgeable and approachable. And professional,” said McLean. “She would text me asking about things she was hearing about lateral moves or resignations and would ask me if I knew any sources she could get confirmation from — she always wanted two sources for everything.”
“But if I was unable to tell her something or confirm something — she didn’t push or pester — she would just say thank you.”
But there’s more here than just polished professionalism about Claire. Her love of life is deep-seated. Her Facebook page abounds with evidence that she’s a soft touch with her time and/or money to any cause associated with a suffering mutt, a small human being or a library.
Her husband chuckles at the mention of such.
“When I’m putting things together at tax-time, I find all this stuff,” says Auchter. “And I have to ask her about it: ‘I didn’t know you contributed to such-and-such.'”
Claire and Auchter attended Houston’s Memorial High School together, both Class of 1980. He was a sportswriter for the school newspaper. She, of course, was editor.
“I’d hand in my stories. She’d take them. And that was that,” Auchter recalls.
Fast-forward 10 years. She went to Trinity University. He to A&M. They were re-introduced by their journalism professor and began dating. They married in 1992. He runs an audio-visual company, Sound & Visions Productions. They have two daughters, now 29 and 27.
She describes herself on her personal Facebook page in four words: “Writer, wife, mother, dog lover.”
There is another word that ought to be added to that Rushmore of character references: “Survivor.”
There was an interruption in Claire’s work with The Lawbook. It came on May 13, 2020, when Claire complained of pain so intense in her back that she needed to be taken to the emergency room. A cancerous tumor was discovered, which would require immediate surgery, and she was admitted to the hospital, then and there — just as Covid-19 was scaling itself to a full-fledged pandemic.
She had barely been admitted when she suffered a massive stroke, recognized almost immediately by the attending nurses. Quick treatment allowed her to survive, but over the next five-and-a-half weeks, she was confined to the hospital; the first few days unable to speak or walk.
Within hours of learning the news, her daughters quit their jobs in other states and returned to the family home in Houston, says Auchter. For those critical first weeks, Covid protocols made them unable to see their mother. Contact was restricted to Zoom visits. They stayed until their mother was clearly taking care of herself.
Gradually, Claire regained enough control to begin a recovery that continues today; a recovery that she attacks with the same unapologetic fierceness she displayed as a journalist.
“She still probably has five different stroke-related appointments each week,” says Auchter, “whether for rehab or recovery or pain. She really works hard; and is now able to do all kinds of things.”
For one thing, she returned to write the Roundup. Though her speech was impaired, she occasionally met with sources. Though unable to use her right hand, she continued to type, producing as many as 25 summaries of deals each week, literally single-handedly.
In between, she has supplemented her rigorous physical regimen with writing seminars and classes, with an eye toward those writing projects, one of which is likely to be a memoir of her post-stroke experience.
Auchter himself has published a novel, “Faith of Our Fathers,” a seriously comedic tale of a young man whose sudden death leaves him stuck on a journey between Heaven and Hell. By his own account, it took him 25 years to complete, so he understands in the most complete way possible what it takes to write a book.
Auchter says that despite the stroke, Claire had always intended to retire at 62. It is thus no coincidence that she turns 62 on Sunday.
So, Happy Birthday, Claire. Happy Retirement. You have a lot of work ahead.