Look at it then as a developer in the real world: I doubt 40 years taught you to give estimates for systems you've never seen, for needs you know nothing about, for clients and users you know nothing about. My guess is that much more often, like everyone else in our industry, you deal with clueless people on the outside who say, 'why should that take so long? it's simple!'.
20 of my 40 years has involved managing and searching document repositories of various flavors. Prior to that, many of my clients were law firms. And yes, I have built more than one legal document repository.
>> systems you've never seen, for needs you know nothing about, for clients and users you know nothing about.
Perhaps you should make fewer assumptions about what I know.
