Absolutely agreed - contracts you're asked to sign without the opportunity for a lawyer to review should be considered invalid/under duress. They're basically like EULAs you only see after you've opened the package and forfeited the right to return the software.

I don't think having to retain a lawyer just to sign an internship offer is ideal either. There should be some guardrails that some things are simply unenforceable and you don't need to get a lawyer involved.

If there are millions of college kids who all need contract review within the span of a few days in the spring, I would expect the market to adapt in some way. The most likely, I think, is that employers (at least employers within an industry) would settle on some boilerplate contract, and law firms would let you upload a contract to their website, have a script run a diff, and come back "Yes, this is in fact the boilerplate contract, here is our plain-English summary" or "No, here's how it differs, you can retain us at normal rates to explain the diff or you can push back on your employer." (They could charge you a few bucks, or they could just have the cost of reviewing this year's boilerplate contract be paid by the employers, who are incentivized to successfully and legally hire interns.)

The more interesting question is whether if everyone knows there's a non-compete and it's the industry standard, there will be any more effective pushback... now that I think of it, I worry there may be less if contracts get mechanically standardized.

Another problem is that you only know the terms of the contract after you're all-in and it's the first day.

I’ve often thought there should be a ratio between transaction value, and the maximum complexity of the contracts involved.

Say 1% is the ceiling. The minimum take home salary of the internship would then be at least 1/0.01=100x the price it would take a lawyer to review and negotiate the employment contract.

Say it takes a lawyer a conservative 5 hours, at a Bay Area lowball of $250/hour. The internship must therefore pay at minimum $125,000 after tax, or terms benefiting the employer (and only those) are unenforceable.

This would be applicable retroactively even when people choose to sign without reading.

Alternatively, the author of said contract could, by law, be forced to pay for the other party’s lawyer.

That seems simpler, but I think it is more easily abused by consumers. (Get a overpriced slimey lawyer, apply for 100 credit cards, and split the fee with the lawyer after the fact).

Is there an existing solution in the court system when you're forced to pay the other side's attorneys' fees, to make sure those fees are reasonable?

My uninformed suggestion is to set a statutory rate for contract review, allowing the legislature to revise it every few years, and perhaps tying it to some other government budget or salary in some way (e.g., some multiple of the effective hourly rate of government attorneys or clerks, or some fraction of the government's maximum allowed rate on their own contract review).