A law firm would be useful in (a) applying to remove illegal content, (b) seize any profit generated by illegal use of clents' content, (c) (if the client requests) horrify users identified of such illegal services, (d) pressure the authorities to crack down on the operation.
Most lawyers do not understand the technical details. We do a hell of a good job of understanding experts' findings and put them in a clear legal structure though.
Most of the boring but billable job I ever made was searching through company registries, google searches, sanctions searches, panama papers searches, reviewing countless pdfs to either (i) mark them as privileged so they cannot be used as evidence, (ii) scan whether there are any documents that may directly implicate the client and if so try to find a way to legally claim it is unusable.
I believe law firms do provide decent service. Billables are there, but no lawyer I know would willingly generate busywork that does not lead anywhere to charge more. OTOH, I HAVE seen instances where a work got reviewed multiple times by different lawyers, because the client was willing to pay more. But even in these edge cases, multiple reviews did benefit the client and they received a better work product.
My advice would be establish a good working relationship with a lawyer in the firm that you trust, continuously send work. Ask estimates if you are on a tight budget. But do not be cheap and try to get things done with less budget. Law firms provide a service you need, if you pay them decently you'll receive your money's worth. Lawyers will literally take a bullet for you to make things happen when you need them.
Apologies for the long rant :).
What’s the order of magnitude here? There have been times in my life where I would have found having a lawyer on standby to be incredibly helpful (e.g. car purchase gone bad, property usage rights dispute, etc.), but at the same time spending $100k a year to have a lawyer on standby to resolve an issue of $5-10k in magnitude is foolish.
I am also talking about corporate law work. Maintaining corporate records, lease agreements, employment agremeents, director changes et.