I think every client knows that there are exceptions to every rule.  If I run across something unusual such as someone owning property for 40 years it would depend on a number of factors - the county that had to be searched and the name that had to be searched.  I would always call the client with a price change before proceeding.  I had an incident where an attorney drafted and filed amended multi-county deeds of trusts on a chain of convenient stores - an out of state attorney.  He used no legals in the D/Ts but only referenced the volume and page of the D/T along with the county that the original was filed.  I might have been searching one of the 6 in that county and had to read every single listed store to find my county and D/T.  It was really a mess.  I called up and priced them different than my quote and it was agreed to.  I really haven't received much else from that company but since I only produced the commercial deeds they couldn't really see what I was up against, only how I explained it.  They had given me like one or two in about  5 counties.  And every county may have had 5-10 stores also owned by this person and every D/T had about 30-40 listed vol/pages only and county only per instrument from every county in Texas.  It was very time consuming.  There were some other variables that I cannot remember - I'm getting old.