I just think people are duped into that; there's way more room for discussion, negotiation, and resolution without resorting to lawyers than many people are frightened (largely by lawyers) into believing. Mostly people don't know what is acceptible behavior; a kitchen contractor should be helping their customer to understand what will happen, when it will happen, and what can be done if it doesn't. Because that's what they do all day long. Instead, what many do, if they have a written agreement at all, is disclaim everything.
Some lawyer told them that was the best thing for them to do.
It would be useful to have agreements that are easy to read, understand, and utilize; most lawyers would never be caught dead writing such a document or making it available. Fortunately there are a few out there who do care about this kind of thing; self-help law is gaining a lot of ground in the US and is characterized by, IMHO, more fair and honest agreements with paths to dispute resolution rather than litigation.
See http://nolo.com/ for details.
It's my experience that once you get some "iron clad" legalese (a misnomer, since no piece of paper written by a shark isn't open to interpretation by another shark) into a relationship, everyone is so scared to sign the damn thing that suddenly you have an adversarial situation instead of one where both sides want to accomplish the same thing without delay or grief. But I think there's a way out, by using standard agreements that everyone understands and agrees to.
Yes, we'll need lawyers, but probably not any more (in number) than we need college calculus textbook writers.
/jordan