A lawyer gives you the benefit of objectivity, specialized knowledge, as well as simply doing the grunt work. The charge for the grunt work is probably even more overpriced than what your mechanic charges for a 99 cent sparkplug. The value of the knowledge depends on what you know (or can learn), and the cost of a mistake. In general a lawyer can't do anything you can't do yourself, but most people don't know how to do most of the things lawyers do, or at least won't do it as well. Sometimes that won't matter and sometimes it will. The important questions are how likely are you to make a mistake, and how much will that mistake cost. How much a lawyer costs isn't important until you know the answers to the first two questons.
FWIW, remember that in the thread on the Piqua winners you suggested a pool contract that would have been held to be invalid if it was challenged. Depending on how others things went, that could potentially reduce shares drastically. I'd say it was an easily avoidable error that was common sense, and didn't require any legal knowledge. At the same time, I certainly wouldn't suggest paying a lawyer to write a pool contract, since your chances of winning are so slim. If you were potentially risking real millions on your ability to get something with rigorous legal requirements right in favor of saving a few thousand bucks, I'd suggest you're probably making a very poor choice.