Nobody owns
the coordination.

Most clients of any complexity have an adviser, an accountant and an attorney. In theory the three coordinate.

The triangle that mostly does not work

Most clients of any complexity have an adviser, an accountant and an attorney. In theory the three coordinate. In practice each does their part in isolation, the client relays messages imperfectly between them, and the consequences surface in April.

The failure is rarely competence. It is that nobody owns the coordination, so it does not happen.

Why you should own it

You see the client most often, you hold the whole balance sheet, and you are the only one of the three paid on an ongoing basis rather than per engagement.

The accountant sees them once a year with last year's facts. The attorney saw them when the documents were drafted and possibly not since. You are the continuity whether or not you have accepted the role.

What good coordination looks like

Send information before it is asked for. Realised gains and losses to the accountant in November, not March. That single habit changes how an accountant thinks about you, because it makes their job easier at their worst moment of the year.

Ask the attorney what would break their documents. Trusts get drafted and never funded. Beneficiary designations override wills and nobody checks them. You are positioned to notice both, and a good attorney will thank you rather than bristle.

Put the question in writing with the numbers attached. "Should we do a Roth conversion?" costs an accountant an hour. The same question with the projected income, the bracket headroom and the amount already calculated takes ten minutes and gets a better answer.

The mistake to avoid

Do not position coordination as oversight. Accountants and attorneys are expert in domains you are not, and any hint that you are checking their work ends the relationship permanently.

The framing that works: you are holding information they need, and you would rather hand it over than have them chase it.

The referral consequence

This is also the most reliable business development available to an advisory firm, and it works precisely because it is not business development.

An accountant refers to the adviser who made this year's filing easier. They do not refer to the adviser who bought them lunch and asked for referrals. The work is the pitch.

Where clients actually come from →