There are two main sets of legal teams in bankruptcy cases: the estate, usually represented by the court appointed trustee's legal team, and individual or group

There are two main sets of legal teams in bankruptcy cases: the estate, usually represented by the court appointed trustee's legal team, and individual or groups of creditors who can afford legal representation. The Trustee in this case wanted to sell everything and be done with the case, handling it as a standard fiat bankruptcy. I believe that it was only due to creditors with enough sway (i.e. whales who could afford their own legal teams) that pressured the Trustee to value the assets accordingly. To your point, the consequence of the successful persuasion has resulted in a high number of billable professional services hours from all sides which has definitely been a drain on the estate and creditor wallets. However, anybody (else) implying that it was the [nebulous] "lawyers" who orchestrated an evil scheme to perpetuate their billable hours from the get-go is being disingenuous and/or lazily finger pointing, unless of course they have some evidence or sources to back their assertion up.