Solicitor increasing fee a week prior to key exchange

Hi,
I would appreciate your thoughts on this ...
I am a week away from getting keys to my new house and I have received an invoice from my solicitor that has increased the price for his services by about 40 % from original fee quoted. The purchase has not been smooth and I appreciate that extra work had to be done by his office, a point that was made to me during telephone conversations, but fee increase was not informed to me.
Am I getting paranoid or is the timing of this no coincidence, If I challenge the fee and my relationship with solicitor goes bad could the sale fall through. I was happy for the most part with my solicitors service and have not had ant issues with him.
The letter explaining the increase calls out issues with the purchase as the estate agent and seller, and not with me. 20 hours or work is quoted.
Should I challange this or am I over a barrel?
Thanks
T101

He's entitled to charge for extra work done. You seem to accept this. Where you disagree is on the level of extra charge, it seems. Talk to him, negotiate with him- in person. Best way to deal with it.

Hi,
You've nothing to lose in challenging it. Similar thing happened to me...the day I was to collect my keys the invoice was emailed to me and the figure was approx. €800 in excess of what was quoted. When I queried it I was told the extra €800 related to an initial property I was going to buy..... but within a month of initially approaching my solicitor to handle the purchase they advised me to back out of the first deal due to no plans to ever finish the development!

Anyway in the heel of the hunt, they backed down when I reminded them that I had backed out at a very early stage as advised by them at the time they'd "done nothing on it anyway". I recieved an invoice for the amount that had been quoted to me and when I collected my keys my siolicitor said and I quote " I wasn't chancing my arm but thought if you went for the initial quote you went for it and if not, you didn't"

Needless to say I was stunned....grabbed my keys and ran!

Thanks for your inputs, I guess I will need to pay more, but how much, is what I need to work out. He is actually increasing his fee by over 100%, the total increase to me is over 40% by the time outlays are added in ...
Thanks
T101

If he has done a bit extra than was required I would expect you would have to pay him for the work done. Perhaps you should try and reach a compromise.

I got work done by my solicitor last year and was quoted for the work beforehand. Before job was completed I asked how much the bill stood at, and it had almost doubled due to unforseen work involved (first time this particular job had been undertaken by them and case was a bit unusual, so hard to tell exactly length of time and outlay involved). Nevertheless, I said that I would find it very hard to come up with the extra money, though I appreciate the work involved, as I had only been quoted x amount and didn't expect to pay quite so much more. They reviewed it again and came down a few hundred, because they said they had quoted me a smaller amount in the first place. It was still more than they had quoted but still a lot less than the final bill. I was happy enough with that.

I think if you go back to them as I did, perhaps they may come down a bit on the price.

On what basis did your solicitor come up with the original quote? If he had done less work would he have given you a discount?

Unless the "extra" work was over complicated or unusual etc. then your solicitor should have allowed for such activities in the original quote. 20 hours of work seems excissive for a few phone calls that were possibly standard enough.

Saying all of that you seem happy with the solicitor so maybe just request a discount and promise early payment etc.

Was it a quote, rather than an estimate? Was it a quote for the full job, or a per hour quote?

I'm sorry but if I got a quote for a conveyancing job I'd find it very hard to agree to pay extra. The extra should be factored into the fee in the first place and if the extra work doesn't materialise it should be taken off the final bill. Jack makes a very good point, I wonder how many solicitors reduce their fee if the conveyance takes less time than anticipated.