What you're describing is more applicable to a motion filed in court (one party is in battle with the other and has no reason to be friendly to the other party

What you're describing is more applicable to a motion filed in court (one party is in battle with the other and has no reason to be friendly to the other party at all). In the case of contracts, you're partially right, but it's more nuanced. The weird thing about contracts is that at the time they are signed, two parties need to agree with each other. If you're hiring a software vendor and I am your lawyer, I need to try to achieve two things at once: protect the company legally, but also sign the deal so that you can use the vendor. So I'm inclined to be somewhat friendly with the other side and to forego "air tight" legal defense of my side so that we can reach agreement. Unfortunately this process has a side externality for clarity: we negotiate little parts of a template and the way we do so probably doesn't jive all that well with the template language.