Do people usually hire an attorney to help with a 1031 exchange or is working with a QI enough? 

Great for record keeping, info exchange between management and tenants and its free to use.

I've heard a lot about the benefits of depreciation and forcing as much into it when you first buy the property, but how does depreciation recapture work and is it something that most investors ignore because they plan on doing a 1031 exchange?

When people's net worth goes up they want to lose the headache factor and can take less yield for being more passive.If a investor is doing a 1031 exchange then typically they have to qualify for a DST or TIC type model.

You can not exchange (e.g.1031 tax deferred) stocks to real property anymore.

You can use it to learn on a smaller scale and once you learn and hopefully earn, you can 1031 exchange that to a bigger property with bigger cashflow.

There was more to work with is as well so I was able to filter out recent properties that exchanged hands and new constructions, effectively leaving me with a list of properties and their corresponding owners.

Sell off all the properties and exchange into one or two bigger properties that can yield better cashflow.

They can keep all the profit and in exchange, you learn in the real world, with a real deal.If you don't have any money, offer to work for them for free.

Anyone looking to share their knowledge in exchange for an internship, let me know.