$1000 is cheap. If you're willing to pay a lawyer $200/hour, why would you be reticent about paying one of the pre-eminent web product design teams half that rate for a day of consulting?
I don't know why it is, but there seems to be a certain resistance that many people in our field have to considering ourselves professionals, deserving of the same rates that other professionals charge and subject to the same types of standards that other professionals have.
If IDEO were charging $5,000 for the same thing, I don't think many traditional product designers would complain; they'd simply wish they could afford it or ask their companies to send them.
In the management/money-making/etc. field, I think many people are skeptical of the other experts as well. Sure, tons of companies will pay more than this to send MBAs to management classes, but it's not necessarily money well spent. This seems pretty similar to the quite standard management-guru book->speakingtour->workshops circuit, except that in this case the management guru is someone the HN community has heard of.
In technical areas, the courses are generally cheaper. For example, one day of SIGGRAPH tutorials costs $375. Of course, there you really are buying a tutorial from experts, whereas here you're probably buying networking as much as anything.
In other professional fields, people do not pay $1000 a day for a session necessarily. The only ones who do (usually) are those requiring continuing education credits - therefore, the consultants get to charge outrageous fees because they have a captive audience/market. Otherwise, the only entities that I know of who regalarly drop a grand or more on a day with somebody - or even a team - is a medium-to-large business for whom it is a tax deduction. And such decisions frequently come down to a management type who is trying to justify his/her existence by being seen to do something.
For perspective, we had a marketing workshop here in Edinburgh that basically offered intensive, MBA-level instruction on marketing. It was taught by a former head of marketing for a major North American firm who had buckets of experience and now has his own major marketing consultancy here in the UK. Around a dozen of us worked with him for 8 workshops and had three extended consultations with him about our particular business circumstance. The cost to the company? £750 ($1200 USD at current exchange) for the first person, £500 ($800 USD) for each additional. Consequently, unless these three amigos are going to ensure the success of every company who signs up, I fail to see how a price tag of $1000 is justified.
I think a lawyer has a bit more utility, in terms of avoiding massive potential liabilities, than telling me that amazing wisdom - until now unknown entirely to business people anywhere on earth and not to be found in any book on business - that "meetings are toxic".[1] Get real, and this isn't one-on-one it's going to be with many more people than most teachers consider optimal (20 or less), so $1000 is not cheap.
I don't know why it is, but there seems to be a certain resistance that many people in our field have to considering ourselves professionals, deserving of the same rates that other professionals charge and subject to the same types of standards that other professionals have.
If IDEO were charging $5,000 for the same thing, I don't think many traditional product designers would complain; they'd simply wish they could afford it or ask their companies to send them.