Yeah, paying a lawyer and their associated paralegals for 2-4 hours of work is easily worth the low four figure rate.

7 figures?! Uh… not many houses around here go for seven figures.

not many houses around here don't

Seven figures means a million dollars or more.

A large fraction of us on Hacker News are in the California Bay Area / Silicon Valley, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Toronto, London, and other major cities where a million dollars gets you a small home, far from the city. In most of those cities, you need to pay well over a million to get an average-sized single family home.

A very standardized, regulated transaction. The title company and the banks do these all day every day. Unless there is something unusual about your situation, all a lawyer is going to do is cost you money.

This is a regional thing. In many west coast states, escrow companies are the norm and nobody hires a lawyer. In many east coast states, both sides hire a real estate lawyer (and you'd be crazy not to).

Most people who've only lived in one region don't realize that the other half of the country does real estate transactions completely differently.

In Washington State escrow agents actually are attorneys -- but their practice is limited to one very specific area of law: real estate purchase contracts.

https://www.wsba.org/for-legal-professionals/join-the-legal-...

Because their practice area is so limited they don't have to go to law school, and their "bar" exam is much easier.

The flip side of this is that unlimited practice attorneys (i.e. "real lawyers") are automatically allowed to do everything that real estate agents and escrow agents are allowed to do.