A similar situation is discussed in Godin's Linchpin: you could do most of that attorney's job, perhaps even better than he does, except for what he does for five minutes a day. Of course, all the value is created in those five minutes.
I think also, a really top notch expert makes what they're doing seem so effortless that you do think "yeah, that's just what I would have done".
And probably you would have, at least eventually, although maybe with a couple of false starts and by that point perhaps some misfeatures have already been locked in and now your simple, elegant solution (the one you came up with all on your own without some fancy consultant) isn't quite going to work the way you'd like it to, but it's still 90% of the way there and you're only a little bit over budget -- so long as you cut a couple of the less useful features you should hopefully get the whole thing done before you lose the support of management -- but then they change CTO and the whole thing gets put on hold indefinitely.
