Several different deadlines run at once in any disagreement, set by different people for different reasons, and the earliest one is usually the least advertised.
Retention money usually gets spent on whichever lever is easiest to pull. The options differ enormously in how long the effect lasts and what it actually costs.
Pricing against a competitor copies their arithmetic without ever seeing it. The number that decides everything is how many hours a year can honestly be billed.
A boundary disagreement is the clearest example of a problem where an attorney is unnecessary for nearly all of it and genuinely essential for one specific part.