Mai works at a small design studio. On Monday her manager sent her the lease for their new office and asked one question: is there anything in here we should worry about? The agreement was eleven pages long. Most of it was ordinary. The landlord would establish the studio in the space from the first of March, and the studio would pay on the fifth of every month. Mai read it twice and found nothing strange until she reached page seven. One provision said the studio could not terminate the lease during the first two years. If they left early, they would still obligate themselves to pay the rent until the end of the term. Another line said the landlord could cancel the lease with sixty days notice if the building was sold. Mai wrote a short note to her manager. Either party can walk away, she said, but only one of them can do it cheaply. We are locked in for two years; they are locked in until someone buys the building. Her manager called the landlord's agent that afternoon. They did not ask for a lower rent. They asked for one sentence to be changed: if the landlord ends the lease early, the studio gets three months of rent back to cover the move. The agent agreed, and it took four minutes. Before signing, the manager asked Mai to specify in plain language what the studio was agreeing to, so that everyone on the team could read it in one minute. We stay for two years and we abide by the payment date. If we leave early, we pay to the end. If they end it early, they pay for our move. Nobody wants to read eleven pages twice. But somebody has to read them once, and the person who does is the one who can determine what the deal really says.

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