Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Most written contracts are drafted by lawyers, but legal scholars rarely study contract documents, preferring instead to focus on the legal rules governing contracts. Despite this neglect on the part of the legal academy, empirical studies of contracts have become more common over the past decade. However, the range of questions addressed by these studies is narrow, inspired primarily by economic theories that focus on the role of contracts in mitigating various forms of advantage taking by contracting parties. We believe that legal scholars have something important to add to this scholarly discussion – namely a deep knowledge of contract …