It’s not just the few hours they’ll be testifying, or giving deposition. A reasonable corporate representative is going to need to do quite a bit of prep work and review of relevant materials. So, that’s both a legal cost, and a productivity cost for whoever is collecting those documents and briefing the corporate representative.
“Just some hired legal representatives” hides quite a bit of cost.
The suggestion was "hire a legal representative" to be the corporate witness. I would assume that's a suggestion similar to the one in this article (https://www.agilelaw.com/blog/hiring-a-lawyer-to-be-your-30b...) about hiring a lawyer to be your 30(b)(6) deponent.
So, let's assume we hire a lawyer at $300/hour. Let's say they'll be a witness for 6 hours. But, they need to be carefully briefed and prepped on all the topics that they would need to be a witness for. Maybe that's 40 hours of work.
46*$300 = $13,800.
As the article on 30(b)(6) depositions notes: "So to do it right, the lawyer will need to be thoroughly prepped on the 30(b)(6) notice topics, which will certainly take time and cost the client money. No one said litigation is cheap."
I think most small-businesses would probably choose to use an internal employee to be their corporate representatives, especially in a matter such as this where they aren't directly involved in the litigation.