Law is the practice of creating, enforcing, predicting, and following rules. This can include the rules we create as a society [laws, constitutions, and statutes], the rules we create as communities [HOA rules, business bylaws], the rules we delegate to others to create [administrative rules], and the rules we create between individuals [sales contracts, agency contracts]. With rare exception, there is no such thing as THE CONTRACT that must be used to accomplish something. This is why napkin contracts exist and are enforceable; that contract that two parties scrawl on the back of a coaster in the back hours of a night after coming up with a new idea, that is just as enforceable as a well formatted, typed document covered in Latin phrases.
The downside to a napkin contract or a super basic contract, is that it predicts very few things going wrong. When a contract says “I buy your car for $10,000” but nothing else, you have a contract, but in what form…? The parties may disagree on when the money exchange was supposed to happen, may disagree on who is supposed to file paperwork, on where the transfer occurs [“I thought you were going to fly over to Florida to pick the car up? What do you mean ship it to Oregon?!”]. Hence, over time, contracts and drafting tends to grow more sophisticated and more complex because the weight of experience adds language to stop future problems [functionally the legal equivalent of going “every time I walk past that coffee table I stub my toe, so let’s move the coffee table.”]. A legal form is a form that the drafters pour their experience and knowledge into, with a goal of catching the majority of problems that could arise. Nonetheless, a form, by nature, is not created to address the specific transaction, rather it is created to address the general “average” transaction. The more moving parts the form has, the more closely the contract can be chipped into the shape of a specific transaction’s needs, but some contract transactions will always remain so complex as to require a privately and intentionally drafted contract [e.g. selling a historic property that has cultural impact, like the Falling Water house will invariably require more than a normal contract]. Over time, some provisions become standard practice in contracting, such as the “time is of the essence” provision; these standard provisions and “boilerplate” tend to be language that directly addresses problems that regularly arose in previous contracts with enough frequency to warrant a response on all forms.
Always remember when using pre-drafted forms rather than custom drafted forms – the form is the base and is generally going to be designed for the average transaction, without the messy complexity that real life imposes on transactions. Some forms may have addendums that address more specific context of a transaction, but the addendums are equally pre-drafted for the average transaction within that specific context [e.g. the contingent right to purchase form is sculpted around the “normal” contingent right scenario]. The general addendum document allows you to force modifications into a transaction, but there is oftentimes a turning point where a transaction is complex enough to warrant having an attorney draft a form-fitting original contract to meet the transaction’s needs.