Do more with less

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So often we hear a general counsel bemoaning her o’er stretched budget, sighing but bravely intoning, “we will just have to do more with less”.

Our favourite librettist, Otto Büchstein addressed this in the culmination of his epic operatic cycle Form und Substanz. In that last opera, Talentdämmerung Wickliffe Hampton executive Prepostero tells his general counsel, Triago that he must economise on his external legal spend.

Triago protests but Prepostero peremptorily snuffs out the candles and exits his client’s chamber with these harrowing words:

Prepostero: Whose hand controlleth the whip, Triago?
Surely, thinkest not thou it is thee?
Mend thy juridical footsteps, re-cut your cloth.
Remember who approves your salty bills.
It is me.”

Poor Triago distraught on the floor, from where he embarks on the beautiful, lachrymal aria Dovremo Solo Fare Di Più Con Meno (“We shall just have to do more with less”) only to be interrupted by the court jester Nuncle, listening from a nearby window, who snipes sardonic rejoinders to each of Triago’s complaints.

Triago: When the master says, “Thou shalt do more”
I am thus obliged: I shall do more:
For legal art is the whole of the law.
And when he says “thou shalt take less”
It is the same: less shall I take.
With crumbs and crusts do shall I make.

Nuncle: Whose legal income’s stretched so thin
To play so small a violin?

Triago: Oh manifold skill! Flow like a stream
About the smooth stones of demand!
Collaboration? Oh, blast my eyes!
How we strive to operationalise
But how to vouchsafe service deliv’ry
With fewer dressed in legal livery?
What wouldst thou give for this old rope?
A measley mill or two?

Nuncle: You’ll cope.

Triago: Oursource! Rightshore! By this peroration
I endorse the yen for automation.
I’ll take the strain and with aught stress
But living breath, do more with less.

Nuncle: Oh, bless.
It’s easier than that:
You’ll just do less.