Welcome to FairContracts.org!

September 29, 2010, then-Professor Elizabeth Warren, in her first major address to bankers after her appointment to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said this, according to a New York Times, report:

“Where I come from, nobody calls fine print, hidden fees and surprise penalties ‘negotiated contract terms’ or ‘innovations,’ ” she said, in a jab at the language lenders have used to describe complex contractual terms. “On a polite day, my brothers in Oklahoma call that kind of stuff ‘garbage.’ They don’t care if it is there because regulators required it, because the companies’ lawyers were trying to ward off lawsuits, or because it was a good place to hide another new fee. They simply see a world in which the financial institutions they do business with are not on their side.”

We agree, and have been working to develop the Fair Contracts Project to rebalance the power between businesses and individual consumers by educating about and reforming harmful provisions to consumers in the fine print of standard form contracts.  We intend to create a reinvigorated frontier in contract and consumer law to replace the gobbledygook of unfair fine print and make business-to-consumer standard form contracts fair, accessible and understandable for consumers. 

See Ralph Nader in the video below explain the fundamental problem.  Also see this video interview by journalist and New York Times best-selling author Bob Sullivan, made on his Hidden Fee Tour across the country, and featuring the Fair Contracts Project director describing some of the harmful provisions to consumers in the fine print. And read about Elizabeth Warren’s exciting new ideas for the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau: http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/warren-outlines-sweeping-new-financial-protection-approach-20101026

Please join us in this effort!

This site is still under construction and we welcome your input.  See the suggestions for what you can do today to take action to help make standard form contracts fair, accessible and understandable.