In today's hyper-competitive world, everything can seem more difficult. The old days of a client choosing a law firm and sticking with it through thick and thin are out. Clients not only expect results, they expect value-added results.

Cross-marketing and leveraging are ways to add value to your results and develop long-term profitable relationships. They can also reduce the chances that your clients will march out the door to look for new counsel for each legal issue they have.

Big-picture business development

Cross-marketing allows a firm to sell additional services to a client.

It takes less money to keep a client in-house than it does to recruit a new one. The stronger the relationship between a client and attorney, with multiple services being performed by the attorney or firm, the harder it is to break that relationship. A client can evaluate a firm's overall performance, not based on a single issue.

Some lawyers are natural at building this sort of relationship, whereas others - especially those with an eat-what-you-kill, territorial approach - cringe at the idea of cross-marketing for fear of "losing" the client to another firm, or even another attorney in their firm. However, smart cross-marketing means that the client is so entwined with the firm's services that the client builds loyalty to the firm or lawyer.

Loyalty to the firm means a better overall profit for the firm and, in the end, a better bottom line for both the individual attorney who "shared" his or her client and the firm itself. Being territorial about a client is good for no one. It isn't good for the firm, the client or the primary lawyer, whose only hold on the client is that single piece of business.

Say a small business owner comes to you for a breach-of-contract issue. As your litigation attorneys deal with that issue, one of your corporate attorneys is called in on the case to discuss with the client and the litigation attorney the problems with the contract and how, if your firm were to draft such a document in the future, you would avoid these problems.

Offer the client the firm's services in your top-notch corporate department. Show them the value you alone can add to the legal work. You are adding a value to the client, teaching them how to save money in the future by avoiding litigation. Also, make sure you point out that as a business owner in New York state, the client needs a good estate plan to avoid taxes, or perhaps to provide for their children.

Know your clients well enough to approach them and say, "You have a need you might not be aware of, and it is one we can fill for you." Once you have that estate plan in place, create a database and a follow-up plan so that every five years, you call this client in to review his or her estate-plan needs and how either they or the law have changed.

If your small-business owner wants to retire or sell, you want to be his or her go-to firm. Having established a relationship where you do all of a client's legal work means that when it is time, you are the firm for your client to turn to.

Dip into your talent pool

Leveraging - having less experienced attorneys handle some legal work - is another way to add value to the client. Leveraging can improve profitability, but it poses a challenge for any attorney who is reluctant to let a client go. It requires that the more experienced attorney learn to trust a newer attorney. Experienced attorneys have an obligation to their firms to get to know new recruits and mentor them so that those newbies can be trusted.

Leveraging down legal work to less experienced - usually younger - attorneys is good for business. You sell the concept to your client by explaining that the newer attorney will handle the less complex, more routine matters of the case, thereby saving the client money, while the more experienced attorney will supervise and direct the other attorney, and handle any complex matters.

This means the client will be developing a relationship with a younger attorney, but it gives that younger attorney great experience in learning how to handle clients so that one day, they will be capable of leveraging down to even newer attorneys. It is the responsibility of more experienced attorneys to mentor younger ones on more than just how to draft a motion or appear in court; they should teach less-experienced colleagues how to deal with clients, and move on to client development. All this is for the good of the firm, both long-term and short-term.

One of the reasons many young associates hop from firm to firm is that they are often looking for a mentor who will teach them not the fine points of the practice of law but the part no law school trains new lawyers in: how to develop business and client relationships naturally and how to see the big picture.

Many associates long for client contact - not just for the opportunity to develop clients, but for the mentoring and training that makes this opportunity attractive.

For small and midsized firms, I see not cross-marketing and not leveraging as irresponsible, and tantamount to negligent business practices in a super-competitive legal business environment. It is short-sighted not to share one's clients with others in the firm.

Firms might wonder at the commitment to the firm of an attorney who fails to engage in cross-marketing and leveraging techniques that can only profit everyone involved: the client, the originating attorney and the firm.

Jennifer McCann, an Amherst solo practitioner, has worked at large and midsized law firms. She can be reached at cybele727@gmail.com.