Please help - workcover and ourlawyer

Two years ago, we hired a well known "no win, no fee" law firm (the one you see advertisements everywhere) to handle my husband's back injury case.Over the past two years, their fees have increased three times, but we feel we have received very little actual help. Our lawyer mainly passes our messages on to the WorkCover lawyer instead of providing advice or explaining our options.
The WorkCover side prepared a 500 page report containing many statements that are false, Because we felt our case was not being properly reviewed by our lawyer, we spent countless hours going through all 500 pages ourselves. We prepared a report highlighting the issues and provided photos and video evidence to our lawyer. However, during our recent discussion about the upcoming compulsory conference, it became clear that our lawyer did not seem familiar with the evidence we had provided. When we raised important points, the response was simply, "We don't know what the judge will say" and "We don't know what the judge will think."

We understand that no one can predict the outcome of a case, but we expected our lawyer to understand our evidence and help us build the strongest case possible. Now we have been told we need to pay an additional $10,000 for a solicitor to represent my husband at the compulsory conference. Has anyone experienced something similar with a WorkCover claim or a lawyer like us? If we cannot reach an agreement at the compulsory conference, what happens next? Does it automatically go to court?