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It is customary in my state for both the buyer and seller to hire their own attorneys. Fees range $350-500, each. Both attoneys usually show at closing at the title company, as do both real estate agents.
The seller picks the title company and the seller's attorney is usually the party who does the picking. The attorney representing the seller is more often than not, an agent for the title company and rebills the title company for services.
Buyers eventually become sellers and are more likely to use the same attorney they did when they purchased.
I can no longer answer for how it is now, but when I was a paralegal, the Buyer's attorney chose the title company depending on where we could get a "start". For those who don't know, a start is the date on which the title company last insured a warranty deed and the title only had to be searched to that point. It saved a ton of time for a title searcher but I often went 50 years beyond that point for my own peace of mind - if it came to a problem, it was my reputation on the line as well as the attorney's. And I cannot tell you the number of times I found problems that were supposed to have been cleared up but were not. It was all in my report and often the title company did nothing; but there was one case that wound up in court to quiet title.
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