Ashley Fincher was part of the Comerica legal team that won the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for M&A Transaction of the Year related to the bank’s $10.9 billion merger with Fifth Third Bank. In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, she discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Texas Lawbook: Tell me a little about your family and growing up.
Ashley Fincher: I was born and raised in Alabama; specifically, a small town called Wetumpka in the central part of state. I did not live outside of the state until I went to law school. My dad was in sales and my mom worked for the state of Alabama in various roles after she retired from teaching physical education.
Lawbook: Any lawyers in your family?
Fincher: I am the first!
Lawbook: When did the idea of being a lawyer first pop up for you?
Fincher: I loved live theater (both plays and musicals) as a child — participating in it back then, but I still enjoy attending as an adult. My mom knew even then that I appreciated the finer things in life and that the theater would be a tough lifestyle, so she clipped a newspaper article for me with a headline “Frustrated actors often find a home in the courtroom.” It planted a seed then that I always had in the back of my mind as an option, but I didn’t grow up thinking that being a lawyer was my one and only path.
Lawbook: Have you had any life-impacting events that impacted you as a person or your career?
Fincher: My husband Cody and I moved to Texas in 2014 for his job (he is a cloud database architect and is now with Google), which had a major impact to my career because it opened up the in-house market in a way that was never really an option for me in Alabama. We were newly married and the move was transformational for both of us personally and professionally, as we planted roots as a couple here and built wonderful friendships. At the time, I was counsel with a wonderful law firm (Phelps Dunbar) who allowed me to join their DFW office while remaining involved with my team, clients and cases back in Alabama. About a year and half later, I had the opportunity to join Comerica in-house.
Click here to read the story of the 2025 DFW M&A Transaction of the Year as Lawbook reporters Allen Pusey and Mark Curriden provide the behind-the-scene details of how the Comerica team got the deal done.
Lawbook: What led you to go in-house and, separately, what led you to join Comerica?
Fincher: As outside counsel, I distinctly remember in 2010 being knee-deep supporting financial institutions across the Gulf Coast as banks and businesses in this region worked through a triple whammy: the collapse of the real estate market, the Great Recession and the BP oil spill. On many cases, I thought, “If only I would have been able to have gotten involved a few months earlier and maybe I could have suggested this solution as opposed to that one.” I saw firsthand that the “ounce of prevention” that effective in-house counsel is in a position to offer would have almost always led to a more effective and cost-efficient outcome for everyone than the pound of cure I was bringing to the table as outside legal.
Lawbook: When and how did you first get involved in the Fifth Third Bank deal and what were your specific roles?
Fincher: Among other functions in support of our executive leaders, I became involved in the deal to support legal due diligence and reverse due diligence matters enterprise-wide. I also assisted on preparation of disclosure materials relating to litigation, labor and employment, corporate operations and procurement as these are my areas of responsibility.
Lawbook: What have been one or two of the biggest challenges you have faced on the deal and how did you overcome those challenges?
Fincher: The compressed timeline has probably been one of our biggest challenges, which we have only been able to accomplish by working together and being internally extra communicative to be sure that all of us were on the same page and not duplicating efforts.
Lawbook: What was your best day at Comerica?
Fincher: My best day at Comerica came as part of our annual corporate United Way campaign during the pandemic. As a regional campaign leader, my team and I worked very hard to pivot from what had been traditionally well supported in-person activities to an all-online campaign. We actually ended up setting a record that year for contributions received across the company. I was so proud of the campaign’s leadership and volunteers for their efforts in pulling together to make the campaign a success, but even more proud of my Comerica colleagues as a whole who were, in many cases, struggling themselves with pandemic effects. They nonetheless still felt it was important to support the many needs in the communities we serve with enhanced generosity.
Lawbook: What do you look for in hiring outside counsel?
Fincher: We are certainly results driven at Comerica, and cost certainty and efficiency are big components of a “win.” At the same time, I place a lot of value on the soft skills of outside counsel, in that I respond much more to counsel who are collaborative, creative and communicative with my team and me. We do not just hand off a matter at Comerica — we stay involved and accountable to our internal business partners even when outside counsel has been engaged.
Lawbook: What does outside counsel need to know about working with you?
Fincher: Keep me updated. I’d rather you feel like you are “bothering me” or giving me too much information than not be able to intelligently answer a question that a senior leader or business partner asks me about an existing matter you are working.
Lawbook: What question am I not asking that I should be asking?
Fincher: How the in-house legal function has evolved from 10 years ago when I took this role. With every year, I’ve seen how technology advancements have changed the game in business as a whole, and legal departments have felt the impacts. All of us now have reporting and data capabilities that we couldn’t have even dreamed of 10 or even five years ago, and while some legal departments are always going to be more well-resourced than others, our internal clients and leaders expect us to be data savvy and able to understand how the data from across the enterprise plays in to legal and risk management and analysis.
Fun Facts: Ashley Fincher
- Favorite book: No one favorite, but I love nonfiction (Michael Lewis especially) and biographies. My favorite authors of fiction tend to be but aren’t exclusively Southern. Some favorites are Ann Patchett, Pat Conroy and Tom Wolfe.
- Favorite music group: I love music and especially love female pop singers. I’ve seen Beyoncé and Lady Gaga in concert multiple times and went to Wembley Stadium in London with my husband and some of my best friends to see Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
- Favorite movie: Shakespeare in Love
- Favorite restaurant: Mot Hat Bai, Gemma and Nick & Sam’s are our Dallas standbys.
- Favorite beverage: Cappuccino in the a.m., red wine in the evening.
- Favorite vacation: Northern Italy and Switzerland with my husband to celebrate a milestone anniversary.
- Hero in life: I don’t have one. Throughout my life, I’ve borne witness to so many people quietly doing heroic things in their personal and professional lives. I believe that we all contain multitudes, and are capable of heroism in many different contexts if we have the confidence and bravery to make that scary step and give ourselves the capacity to be great.