Let’s say you’re a general counsel leading a resource constrained legal department. You’re entering planning season, and you anticipate even more work coming your way in the next year. You go into budgeting meetings armed with plenty of examples of your overworked team. But at the end of it all, you find out your department won’t be getting any additional resources.

This may be a familiar scenario for many company executives, and it hits home for anyone leading a legal team. There’s a widespread perception in the business world that legal is a cost center, which makes it incredibly difficult to acquire more resources and headcount.

But general counsel can actively look to get more resources. Over the past year, I’ve spoken to countless legal department leaders at a wide range of companies. A few common themes emerged.

Align your resource requests with your company’s top priorities. Is your legal department working on matters that are most important to the business? Legal plays a critical part in highly regulated companies.

For most other companies, revenue or profit growth is likely a top priority. At these types of companies, legal departments struggle to gain resources because they are viewed as cost centers that slow everyone else down.

It’s so important for general counsel to understand what’s valuable to your CEO and department heads. It will be much...

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