I was able to reach out to an old coworker and get their less alias.
less -M
From the man-page:
-m or --long-prompt
Causes less to prompt verbosely (like more), with the percent into the file. By default, less prompts with a colon.
-M or --LONG-PROMPT
Causes less to prompt even more verbosely than more.
This experience has made me think that vi might be better for most things...