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The book opens the first Monday of October and closes the day before Thanksgiving. Anything firm owners call us about outside that window we write down on the October 1 intake list in the order the call came in.
The first ten intake calls of October go to returning firms. The next ten go to firms referred by a returning firm owner or by a preparer currently on the bench. By Halloween we're usually 80% deployed for the coming season; by Thanksgiving the last seats fill and the book closes. New firms outside the Upper Midwest footprint we will politely point toward two peers we trust — one in Des Moines, one in Indianapolis — who run similar benches for Iowa and central Indiana respectively.
We backfill the bench in June and July, not year-round. Most people who join the bench come in through another preparer already on it; roughly two-thirds of new bench hires for the last five seasons have been retired partners or seniors from firms Marlene worked with before 2014. If you're earlier in your career and looking for year-round work, we're not the right practice for you — we'd rather say so plainly than string you along through a summer of intake calls.
We don't deploy under master-services-agreements, we don't accept rate cards, and we don't do the centralized-staffing thing. The contract relationship is between us and the individual firm owner, full stop. We've seen what happens when that line gets blurry.
Thanks for stopping by. This is probably a quieter website than you expected, and that's on purpose.
Currently: busy-season bench fully deployed through April 20. Extension-wall intake (for the September-October deployment) opens mid-May. Main-season intake for 2026 opens the first Monday of October 2025.
If a referral comes in during October, we schedule ninety minutes. Usually on the phone; sometimes in person if you're within easy driving distance of Water Street. We'll ask for last season's return count by office, last season's peak-week preparer schedule, and the single worst week of last season in the firm owner's own words. We'll ask to see a blank copy of the firm's review checklist. We won't ask you to fill out anything, we won't send a follow-up questionnaire, and the only PDF we ever send is the one-page scoping memo in November.
Monday through Thursday, mornings are best for intake calls. Fridays Marlene is out talking to preparers or driving a loop through current deployments, which is most of the job October through April. The phones go quiet the last week of April and don't really come back until the firm recap potluck in mid-May.