Mainly analysis and evidence retrieval: reconstructing the earlier role accurately, gathering promotion records, and drafting an explanation that holds together. Expect more legal time than a straightforward history requires, and ask for the assessment to be scoped separately from any drafting.
Pay for the assessment before the drafting
It is usually worth commissioning the eligibility review as its own piece of work, because its conclusion may change what is filed and when. Agree what the review covers, what happens if it identifies a problem, and whether its fee carries into later stages. Internal time spent retrieving payroll and approval records is a real cost too.
Confirm official charges at the time of the relevant step. Add a specific question to that scoping conversation: what does the review cost if it has to be repeated. Promotion-timing cases change shape when a new fact emerges — an earlier secondment, a period on a different group entity's payroll, a leave that interrupted the run — and each new fact can reopen the analysis.
Establish whether a revised assessment is billed afresh, and whether it is cheaper to hand over a complete and unflattering history at the outset than to supply it in instalments. Ask also what the business is expected to provide and in what form, since retrieval time is a real cost that no invoice shows. Hypothetical example: an analytics firm supplies an employment history in three tranches over five weeks as each question is asked, and the resulting assessment costs roughly twice what a single complete disclosure would have, which is a process failure rather than a pricing one.