A few months ago I was helping a friend review a revised freelance contract.

The client had "made a few small changes" - their words.

We had two PDF versions. No track changes. No diff. Just two documents that looked almost identical.

So we did what anyone does in that situation: opened both side by side and started reading. Line by line. Paragraph by paragraph.

Two hours later we found three changes. One of them was a payment clause that had been quietly reworded to cap late fees.