Solicitor's bill unreasonable? Help please

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My brother went to a solicitor to sort out his separation agreement from his wife and she quoted him "around ?150".
He paid ?130 about a month ago when they requested it and has today received another bill for ?560. He asked her to make one amendment to the separation agreement and that is the only extra work he has instructed her to do.
What on earth is going on? How can "around ?150" turn into ?690? He has phoned and asked for an itemised bill and when that arrives we will scrutinise it and try to work out what all this extra cost is for.
Does anybody know what he needs to do if he wants to dispute the bill, and what rights he might have?

One more point for your brother to think about - if he instructed the solicitor, then the solicitor should not have been meeting with or giving information to your brother's wife without his consent (i.e. if some of the work the solicitor is billing for relates to advice given to his wife then your brother should refuse to pay for it).

Hope that helps.

£150 an hour is very cheap for lawyers. All the points above are good.There should have been something in writing about costs. If there isn't the firm is at fault. He needs to check again and ask them to see a copy of their written information about costs they sent to him. If they forgot to send it they are in trouble and perhaps won't pursue him for more than that sum anyway.

Think everyone here is right. I used to work as a solicitor in Leeds and £150 is certainly not high, especially if a partner.

I would ask for an itemised bill, and ask for a copy of their client care letter explaining who was to carry out the work and how much it would cost, if they didn't send one, why not?

At my old firm they have gone from using minimum 6 minute units to 10 minute units but they are a commercial firm and generally deal with bigger more time consuming projects. Very glad don't have that billing pressure now!

Quick update .. my brother has now received the itemised bill and to be honest we are not much wiser as to what all the extra cost is for.

All it says is things like 'letter sent', 'letter received', 'phone call received' and so on. Is it acceptable to ask them to state what the letter was about and who it was to/from or what the phone conversation was about and who it was with?

You were right about her hourly rate - she charges £140 per hour in blocks of 6 minutes. And the quote was definitely for the whole piece of work, so she was saying she could do it all in about an hour ....

He is definitely going to take your advice and ask why he didn't get anything in writing up front and why they didn't inform him that the cost was going well above that quoted.

Thanks again ... CM

My aunt got divorced, it cost her hundreds of pounds. I know this as I used to drive her to her solicitors with her purse bulging with notes. It was she who divorced him and she ended up paying for it all. £150 seems rather low. To arrange our mortgage and deal with the company cost us more than that!

Cm do get him to ask that. I thought it was a breach of law society rules not to send clients a written estimate in advance or written terms with the costs set out and basis for charging.
I don't think you can ask for more than - letter in, letter out. I doubt they would lie about what letters were sent and the overall figure is about what you'd expect for the work done so the only quibble is over the estimate against what was charged oh and I suppose was it just an estimate which could be exceeded - they might have said- we think about an hour but may well be more work which we charge for or a fixed price quote - we will definltely not charge you over that sum (latter very unlikely)

I think the itemised bill is as much as you can expect.

I think the only arguement now can be the difference between what your brother believes he was quoted for the whole job, to the final bill sent out to him by the solicitor.