Hello Jamie,
When fast switching is needed and it has to be low cost, why not? That's how it is done on many T/R switches such as those in ultrasound scanners. I have used the old BAS21 a lot when pulses of more than 100V had to be switched. For 500mV any old diode would do as long as it fulfills you switching speed requirement, mainly related to the reverse recovery time.
FET switches are available as well but their prices have gone up over the last few years so I don't use them much anymore. For GHz designs there are also nice RF switch chips from the WLAN and cell phone world.
Personally I don't care much about what's "common practice". If a design fulfills the functional requirement spec with healthy margins and is very low in cost then it is a good design.