'Properly' price shop means that a client would be able to evaluate quality/price across a wide variety of firms in a transparent fashion relatively easily. Say with a week or two of work.

That is impossible because the quality of work for a lawyer is very, very difficult to gauge, and it may take years (or decades) for bad work to be visible in many cases (say missing some bad edge cases in contract language, or they can't handle in litigation in certain types of cases, or the like).

And other lawyers have little incentive to price shop either, as they usually get to add on a little on top when they farm out the work. Cost-plus, essentially.

And if 'very expensive and opaque' is the norm, it's not like 'very expensive and opaque' is unreasonable.