Christopher Digby-Bell (Letters, 7 January) clearly does not live in the real world when he claims that ‘it is only lawyers who are paid more if the work takes longer than expected’. Anyone with experience of builders knows that more often than not, problems arise as the work progresses, which increase the length of the project and therefore the cost. So solicitors are far from unique in being unable to know the time it will take to complete a matter or project.

There are many examples of this in legal work – for instance in probate matters I am often told, when asked to estimate the cost of winding up an estate, that mother or father’s affairs are very simple with perhaps only a single bank account, only for numerous assets to come to light over the following weeks and months. In addition, sometimes partners or children appear, of whom the family had no knowledge.

So the reality is that initial instructions are usually changed and it is often impossible to predict how much time a particular transaction is going to take with any degree of certainty.

Richard Rix, Hallett & Co, Ashford