Secrecy norms drive industries to favor extralegal agreements over contracts [causal]
Given the well-established institutional premium on secrecy, parties are rarely willing to pay the reputational price of violating that norm simply to gain access to the courts. Historically, preserving the secrecy norm is one of the primary reasons that the industry uses extralegal agreements rather than legally enforceable contracts.
Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal Sys…, loc. 144