There are legitimate reasons for having offshore accounts such as if you have homes or do business in more than one country but if you are hiring a lawyer to setup a bank account chances are you are either hiding the money or laundering it.
As far as US bank charging foreign transaction fees, there are banks such as TD Bank and USAA (there are more) that don’t charge them. When my son was learning in Israel I setup an account give him the debit card I deposit money in and he goes to an ATM and takes money out and there was no fees charged to the account. The only problem is if you need to transfer thousands of dollars as ATM s have daily limits.