A contract for a blind date. A restraining order against obnoxious family members on Thanksgiving. OSHA regulations administering the contents of the office fridge. A contract for "Boy" and "Girl" entering into a Long-Term Relationship, including a definition of the term "fat" (§ 1.0: That which, by definition, Girl is incapable of being) and a sub-clause governing the position of the toilet seat (§ 4.5: Shall at all times remain in the "down" position). And a prenuptial agreement with your next hair stylist ("Waiting" shall be defined as something done by other, lesser customers. Client shall never wait).

Yes, they're finally here, twenty mock contracts for those areas in our lives that need it most, from sharing the television remote to sitting next to a total stranger on an airplane who wants to tell you the story of his life. Wondering why dry cleaning and ski rentals are already regulated via binding legal contract, while, mysteriously, your sex life is not, Dahlia Lithwick and Brandt Goldstein attack the complications and inconveniences of modern life in the best way that they, as lawyers, know how ? with contracts.

This legal binder contains 20 mock-contracts, written in legalese, to help you deal with the frustrations of everyday life. There is a blind date agreement, with the parties "desperate female", "desperate male" or jointly "the fools". There are agreements for your hairdresser, mother and workmates.

A contract for a blind date. A restraining order against obnoxious family members on Thanksgiving. OSHA regulations administering the contents of the office fridge. A contract for "Boy" and "Girl" entering into a Long-Term Relationship, including a definition of the term "fat."

Dahlia Lithwick is a senior editor at Slate, for which she writes the column "Supreme Court Dispatches," and has covered the Microsoft trial. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, Elle, and the Washington Post, and she was the 2001 recipient of the Online Journalism Awards for Commentary.

Brandt Goldstein is a writer and lawyer in Washington, D.C. His first solo book, The Floating Wall (a nonfiction legal thriller), is forthcoming from Scribner. A graduate of Yale Law School and a former clerk for the Honorable Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Brandt worked for four years in the Wall Street law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. He served as an Associate in Research at Yale from 1999-2001.