It's a risk/reward issue. By analogy, I am perfectly capable of filling out an IRS 1040 form, so why pay a CPA? Because the CPA knows what things can be classif

It's a risk/reward issue. By analogy, I am perfectly capable of filling out an IRS 1040 form, so why pay a CPA? Because the CPA knows what things can be classified as business expenses. They have first-hand knowledge of which items have passed audits and which the IRS dismissed as farfetched. You're paying for someone who has the insider knowledge to navigate a minefield of non-obvious questions. Or for a technical analogy, I'm capable of learning any programming language you can throw at me. However, a business who wants to hire someone is going to prefer someone with experience in that language's entire ecosystem. It's not enough to know the syntax. That's the easy part. The harder part is knowing which parts to reference at a given time, which modules experienced devs would choose to solve a specific problem, etc. Well, same here. I'm wholly capable of reading and understanding the words of a contract or a summons or a lawsuit. What I don't know is the significance of specific phrases in those things, or what I'm allowed to use as evidence on my own behalf, or which issues I might raise that a judge would dismiss as something learned in the first semester of law school. And that's why I'd pay a lawyer to address legal issues for me.