Reconciling the letter and contract may add legal review time to identify and address discrepancies, plus the employer's own administrative time issuing corrected paperwork. This is generally a smaller, upfront cost compared with the risk of relying on inconsistent documents in an admission request or filing that could face additional questions.
Treat correction time as worthwhile preparation
Ask whether legal assistance includes a document consistency review as part of case preparation, since catching a mismatch early avoids larger complications later. If the employer needs internal sign-off to amend a signed contract, build that administrative time into the budget for delay, even if no direct government fee is involved. Confirm current official fees for the eventual filing or admission step separately.
There is a cost in the other direction that is easy to overlook. If admission is refused or a filing draws a request for further evidence because two documents disagreed, the applicant pays for the second attempt in time as well as money, and the record of the first attempt exists. Ask counsel to price the consistency review as a discrete task with a fixed scope, because it is bounded work: two documents, a short list of fields, one round of correspondence with the employer.
Where the employer will not amend a signed contract, ask instead what a signed addendum would require in internal approvals, how long that takes, and whether an addendum is acceptable evidence in the circumstances.