It's worth noting as well that the decision to settle is (at least nominally) reserved solely to the client. If Marty/id/Zenimax say no settlement, hold the line then ultimately the outside law firm can't do much to wrap things up. They can drop the client, but that has issues of its own.
I think corporate law uses the rationale about legal representation to shield itself from much soul-searching around bad behavior, but that's another discussion and the underlying principle is certainly true.
It may be helpful to contextualize some of these numbers. I'm a law student at a similarly-ranked law school in a lower-COLA area. Like most of my peers I have a job lined up at a BigLaw firm in NYC which pays $215 base and about $35 in bonuses for a total of $250. This steps up in a rigid scale yearly until partnership (or you burn out and die). The older numbers are pre-covid pay bump which has reset comp, and with consulting bumping I suspect comp may rise again.
It's a substantial capital outlay (even though I don't know anyone paying full sticker) but if you can stomach the work it pays for itself fairly quickly. Happy to give a more detailed breakdown of financials as I suspect there are not many lawyers on HN (I made an account to comment on this).