Marty Finestone

I’m a lawyer, legal designer, artist, playlist-maker, husband, and dad.

My work combines 15+ years of legal practice together with a background in technology, operations, and legal design to help legal departments simplify, innovate, and thrive. Over my legal career, I have worked in government, in-house and at a national and then international law firm.

As the head of Legal Adjacency, I help legal departments thrive by doing more with less.

MORE ABOUT MARTY

  • Law Society of Ontario – Member of the Bar, 2005 call
  • Legal Creatives, Certified Legal Design Expert Practitioner, 2021
  • IBM – Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner, 2021
  • Legal Creatives – Legal Design UX Research certification, 2021
  • Legal Creatives – Visual Contracts By Design certification, 2021
  • Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC)
  • Plain Language Association International (PLAIN)
  • World Commerce & Contracting
  • Canadian Bar Association
  • Legal Operators
  • International Business Communications Standards
  • Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion – individual practitioner
  • I love, love, love, listening to music, going to live shows, crate digging, and collecting records.
  • I hosted and produced a couple of live radios shows during my undergraduate days. Even better, my daughter and I co-hosted a live how when she was 5 and 6.
  • The first website that I designed, which was hardcoded in HTML, was done in 1994.
  • I built the Legal Adjacency website myself.
  • I think Lego is one of the best inventions ever.
  • I love houseplants and ice-cream cake.
  • Hockey and Formula 1 racing are the sports that I follow.
  • Some people might think that I have too many sneakers. Others, might think that I don’t have enough.
  • Business and commercial advice
  • Contract drafting and negotiation
  • Technology and IP licensing
  • Cross-border commercial arrangements
  • Sales channel agreements and arrangements
  • Value-added reseller arrangements
  • White-label/private-label arrangements
  • Service agreements
  • Joint-ventures
  • Technology contracting
  • Software development agreements
  • Source code escrow
  • Complex confidentiality arrangements
  • Privacy (private sector)
  • Outsourcing and managed services arrangements
  • Company formation
  • Intercompany agreements and indemnification
  • Corporate governance
  • M&A
  • Negotiation strategy
  • Early and mid-stage financing
  • Institutional reputation matters

• Creative problem-solving
• Plain language contract translation/reformatting
• Contract visualization
• Contract simplification
• Strategy design and implementation
• Coming up with ideas, lots of ideas
• Legal project management
• Service design
• External legal cost containment
• Managing relationships with external counsel
• Change management
• New technology integration and implementation