St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has published Professor Jeff Sovern’s op-ed, Consumers often sign contracts they don’t read or understand. The op-ed, which drew on research reported in the the article Professor Sovern wrote with Professors Elayne Greenberg and Paul Kirgis, as well as the University’s Director of Institutional Assessment, Yuxiang Liu, ‘Whimsy Little Contracts’ with Unexpected Consequences: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Understanding of Arbitration Agreements, opens as follows:

Consumers often sign form contracts without reading them — if you don’t believe me, just drop by a car rental agency and watch what happens.

Consumers may have many reasons for not reading contracts, including that they are too long (the iTunes contract is 32 feet long when printed); that the contracts are incomprehensible (all that legalese); or that they can’t negotiate better terms.