It’s that time of the year again—tax time. For me, we’re a C Corp., so we’re down to about 45 days before our corporate tax return is due. Many of you have an extra month after that to get your return filed.

This is a good time of year to talk about your friendly neighborhood certified public accountant.

Here’s the deal: if your accountant is friendly, keep your accountant. If not, fire your accountant.

And by friendly, I mean that your accountant refers business to you. That’s my idea of friendly.

If your accountant can’t be bothered to send you cases, even after you pay him or her to do your work, find someone else. After all, completing tax returns for law firms isn’t rocket science. You should be able to find someone who can do the work and keep you in mind when the need for family law expertise arises.

Beyond sending you cases, it would be nice if your accountant would take the time to answer your questions as they come up without billing you for each and every call. That’s especially important when you’re calling on behalf of a client of yours who might eventually become your accountant’s client.

A good, healthy relationship with your accountant involves a lot of give and take. Your accountant does your work, and you do what you can to help your accountant out when the need arises. Your accountant makes himself or herself available to answer your questions, and you make yourself available to answer your accountant’s. You might share access to online resources and, most importantly, you work together to generate business for one another. That will likely involve cross referrals of clients, but it might also involve co-teaching seminars, mailing one another’s clients, and keeping each other top of mind when networking opportunities evolve.

It’s all about being friendly. Make sure as tax time rolls around that your accountant is friendly enough.