Hi,

Welcome to With Less - a weekly newsletter dedicated to helping legal creatively do more with less.

I was recently thinking about something that I’ve been guilty of - I have opened emails using “I hope this email finds you well.” Something caused the glass to shatter. It used to be perfectly acceptable, nay perfectly familiar to use those words. Now it’s cringeworthy. It’s absurd, at least if you nitpick around the notion that an email can discover its recipient state of being.

Ok, time for a resolution for 2022 and beyond. None of my emails will find people in any state of being nor will they find doing anything.

But I digress.

There is lots of ‘Life’ and ‘Balance’ in this issue. That’s probably good at this time of year.

Have a great rest of the week,

Marty Finestone

Here are the articles, tips, think pieces, and other reads I want to share with you this week:

Substantive News & Insights 

• What does Ontario’s ban on employee non-competition agreements mean for trade secret protection? (via Fasken)
• Goodbye Shareholder Anonymity, Hello Transparency. (via Holland & Hart)
• Oregon's law banning real estate agents from forwarding "love letters" from potential homebuyers to sellers is being challenged. (via USA Today)
• Canada's most significant legal and business developments of 2021. (via Osler)
• Does your business need to make an annual privacy policy update and share updated consumer metrics under the CCPA? (via Covington)

In-house

• Have a look at this in-house guide to B2B contract templates. (via Radiant Law)
• Why young guns are ditching private practice for in-house legal roles. (via Lawyers Weekly (Australia))

Legal Ops & Legal Tech

• Crunchbase looks at why legal tech market is poised for hypergrowth.
• A free online computer science course for lawyers? And it's connected to Harvard? Sign me up! (via edX)
• A recent study found that robot lawyers ‘may stimulate demand for legal services’. (via the Law Society Gazette)
• What's happening at the intersection of legal tech and how law firms are addressing the ESG challenge? (via Legal Geek)
• The top four most automated legal documents are… (via Artificial Lawyer)

Lawyers & Lawyering

• Some advice for how lawyers can use TikTok to promote themselves. (via Jaffe PR)
• LinkedIn for Lawyers: There’s no Magic Bullet. (via Zen and the Art of Legal Networking)
• The Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s Sources of Success Program is open to new applicants. The program is a twelve-month professional development program tailored for junior and mid-level attorneys from corporate legal departments and law firms. The focus is on identifying successful career strategies and allowing attorneys to develop leadership and management skills, and an opportunity for attorneys to find the right mentor to guide their career advancement. Details and application link are here.

Work

• Don't stop believing that "journey" is the hottest buzzword in business. (via the Hustle) 
• Here are 13 signs, according to research, that someone is about to quit. (via Harvard Business Review $)
• By learning to question and clarify your thoughts, you’ll improve your self-knowledge and become a better communicator. (via Psyche)

Life

• This infographic shows the effects of prolonged anger on the brain. It affects our decision-making ability and ability to plan for long-term among other consequences. (via National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine)
• "Making mistakes on purpose sounds like a contradiction in terms. But for celebrated American author, artist, educator, and designer Laurie Rosenwald, it's key to developing your creativity. "(via Creative Boom)
• "Taking a break isn’t lazy – learning to recharge is a skill that will allow you to enjoy a more creative, sustainable life." (via Psyche)
• Lots of food for thought in this post, which gets into how tracking progress helps us deal with feeling overwhelmed. (via Jocelyn K. Glei)
• "While it’s important to stay informed, too much information can become confusing, anxiety-inducing, and plain counter-productive." How to go on an information diet. (via Ness Labs)
• 12 practical steps to go with the flow. (via HighExistence)
• Watch this video to learn three tips to get started on journaling as self-care.

Balance

• This super interesting website is a literature clock, which tells you the current time using a literary snippet. 
• Curious to know what the ten most expensive artworks by living artists are? (via Daily Art Magazine)
• How an Excel (as in the software) TikToker manifested her way to making six figures a day. (via The Verge)
• Speaking of Microsoft Excel, last weekend, Australian Andrew "NGOAT" Ngai defeated Canada's Michael Jarman in the Financial Modeling World Cup. This is an Excel tournament funded by Microsoft with $10,000 in prizes. Qualifications began in mid-November, with 128 contenders from around the world in a tournament to crown the best competitive financial modelers.  The finals were livestreamed like an e-sport. Somehow this seems bigger than a Moot Cup. (via PC World)

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Until next week good readers.