Is it best to work with an attorney on an hourly, retainer or project basis? I'm a new real estate investor working on deals with other investors.

Most attorneys are skeptical of working on a case/client issue for a set price.  This is because they do not know how long or how intricate the case/client issue will be, and our time is our livelihood.   However, if the projects are a series of component and duplicative parts, a set fee per project is certainly something that can be negotiated.  The issue lies when there is a particular project that goes sideways on all, and the attorney is stuck working for months for free because he/she agreed to a set price but did not anticipate the enormous amount of extra work (time).