PhD student hiring a LaTeX expert to typeset thesis? I am close to finishing my PhD. Some of my peers use LaTeX. Obviously, it looks much better than Word and alike. As I wrote a few papers that go into my final thesis, I however have numerous formats depending on the journal in question. I would like to transform them all into one final document with matching layout. I am OK with TeX, but I'd rather see a professional do it.

I am now considering two options:


Taking my limited TeX-Knowhow to the next level.
Hiring an expert. 


My time is limited. I've got a couple more weeks to go and that should be enough for option #1, as I already know a bit of TeX. But I am an external PhD student and I work on the side.

I have two questions:


What factors should I take into consideration in deciding which route to take?
If I decide for an expert, what criteria do I need to evaluate if the expert is any good?
(I will quote a comment by kahen and a chat message by Ulrike Fischer.)

You have got three qualities of the thesis production: good, cheap, fast. You can choose two.


Hiring a LaTeX specialist is good (if you find a good one), fast (if you find a good one) but expensive --- typesetting a 100-page thesis can take around 20--30 hours of work, easily more depending on the text, on the person you work with, on the amount of discussion about the appearance, proofreading etc.
Making it yourself is cheap. However, unless you are Jarod from the Pretender series or you know LaTeX already, it cannot be both good and fast.


Of course, making it yourself is better in moving your LaTeX skills forward, but I do not think this is crucial for an academic career, surely it is not more crucial than submitting a quality thesis in time. People hire services of all kinds, you get grant-writing, typesetting, conference organization, IT, etc. --- very various kind of out-sourced services for which someone can say: "A good researcher has to be able to do this."

To answer your question about LaTeX services: I doubt universities have, in general, such services themselves. Some have a LaTeX theses class (of varying quality), some even do not have this. However, there are independent LaTeX consults and consulting companies. I can't list any since (1) I don't know them and (2) this is not an advertising site. However, remember that these people are highly specialized, and the prices of their services reflect this.