Survey finds 48% of Americans would be embarrassed to say they signed a contract without reading it.

The survey was conducted by the Goldberg Law Group. Only 16% of Americans say they read every word of a contract. I very much doubt it’s even that high. Almost certainly some of the people who said they read every word were too embarrassed to say they didn’t.  For example, when I polled consumer financial services lawyers, only two percent said they always read contracts and no consumer law professor I polled said they always or even usually read them.  Among the most skipped contract sections, according to the Goldberg survey: arbitration or dispute resolution clauses, with 27% saying they don’t read them. That seems low based on what we found in our Whimsy Little Contracts article, in which few respondents seemed to find the arbitration clause salient. Still, more evidence that if you want to keep something secret, put it in a consumer contract.