As a freelancer I consider contracts little more than good intentions on client side, especially as soon as you cross borders.
As an European I ain't bothering suing you in the US over few thousands of $, a lawyer would be more expensive than letting it go.
On the other hand I take my obligations quite seriously.
Have to say, never had one bad experience in my life, worst that happened was getting paid 10/14 days late.
Getting customers that mean business is the hardest part, lunatics think I am applying for a full time position and making me go through 2/3 rounds of interviews and asking me to implement Levehnstein distance or something to do QA and write E2Es at their scaleup are out of their mind.
In general, contracts often are a good leading indicator of how a counterparty thinks and is likely to behave. Do they start with egregious terms and conditions, do they flex on some of those are all good signals.
One example: does the counterparty start with a one-day NDA or a mutual NDA template.
I presume you meant one way NDA, your overall point is a really good one. Contracts are very useful as a leading indicator of how the counterparty thinks about the relationship.
I've never seen or even heard of one way NDAs.
If you go interview at a Facebook office, you'll be asked to sign one before they let you in. Basically - "we'll tell you stuff. That's confidential. You tell us stuff. That's not confidential".