It's a fair question.
Increasingly, IRCC has stopped communicating with applicants. Delays in applications reach years now, because there's a an application backlog of 2.5 million. Oftentimes, the only way to get a sense of why there's a delay is to file an ATIP.
As a matter of course, are immigration lawyers filing an ATIP for every single client? Generally, yes. It's not to clog up the system; it's because there's no other information available to immigration applicants. An immigration applicant cannot go to an IRCC office and ask to speak to a front clerk like you can at Service Canada.