Plenty of M&A lawyers bill $1000/hour. Hell, Big 4 accountants who handle M&A bill $1000/hour and get away with it.
You're right, even BigLaw lawyers generally don't charge 4 figures an hour. But M&A is a special beast. When you're dealing with a hundred million dollar transaction, the legal and accounting fees are rounding errors.
I'm sure there's a class of M&A laywer, or at least a class of M&A project, where rates can be backed out to 4 figures an hour. But my numbers come in part from recently being a party to a BigLaw-mediated M&A transaction.
(Hopefully this doesn't sound argumentative; I believe you. Just supplying a data point. Overall point: $1k/hr is very very high.)
You're right, even BigLaw lawyers generally don't charge 4 figures an hour. But M&A is a special beast. When you're dealing with a hundred million dollar transaction, the legal and accounting fees are rounding errors.