You can hire a real estate attorney, but our honest reaction is to question going without an agent at all, especially on a first purchase. Since the NAR settlement changed the rules, how buyer representation gets paid is negotiable in every deal. Walking in unrepresented doesn't automatically mean you pocket that money. In practice the listing agent still has to do the buyer-side work and often asks the seller for additional compensation to cover it, so the person who tends to come out ahead is the listing agent. We've seen how this goes wrong. In a recent deal, an unrepresented buyer wrote contract terms that were, frankly, unworkable, the kind of thing a seller would never agree to, and it cost that buyer the deal. A first-time buyer is exactly the person most exposed to that risk. An attorney has a place, and in some states an attorney is standard. But document review is one service. Representation means someone negotiating the deal and protecting your interests from offer through closing. Our advice: get proper representation on a first purchase, and treat the compensation as a negotiable part of the deal rather than a fixed cost you can dodge by skipping an agent.