> Yet some lawyers actually recommend against it, since if you do find prior art, you're now willfully infringing on it, and should cease and desist.
I am not a lawyer.
The advice I have seen from actual lawyers is that this is essentially an urban legend based on a bloke-in-a-bar-told-me level of legal understanding. If you are going to file, why piss away tens of thousands of dollars on filing expenses when you can spend a few days (or pay a professional searcher $1500-2500) to see if it's worth bothering?
The "never search, it triples your death-mo-trons!!1!" comes from an easy legal defence for megacorps. Being able to stand up in court and say "we didn't know about patent X because it is against company policy to search" is much easier than a protracted, expensive and chancy legal discovery process to try and determine who read what, when, and what they may or may not have understood.
> Don't expect a patent lawyer to honestly tell you he doesn't know your domain.
Actually, do expect a patent lawyer to honestly tell you their expertise. They have a fiduciary duty to clients. Turns out you can't charge $300 or $600 or $900 an hour if you've been disbarred. But do ask about their credentials and experience and do choose according to that expertise.
The key is that, having told you their expertise, lawyers will still act on your instructions. I can ask my lawyer to do my laundry if I want. I will be advised that this is not their specialty and that it would be a poor use of my money. But I could insist and my lawyer will shrug and make the arrangements, for several hundred dollars per hour.
I did a lot of the legwork on my patent myself -- I drafted a lot of it, carefully studied cited art and wrote my objections etc etc. I am, after all, the person in world who knows it best. But my lawyer could have done it too, it would've just taken longer and cost a lot more.
One last piece of advice I got about law firms. The $800-$1000/hr places are big city firms. When you hire one, the USPTO examiners will assume you are a GigantoMegaGloboInc and examine accordingly. Sometimes they dislike the booming sound of heavy-gauge letterhead being fired across their bow. A smaller firm can typically give you closer attention and is less likely to seem as impersonal.