Significant drawbacks, indeed

Who knew that serfdom was actually an institution of "contract enforcement."

Tracy Denison, "Contract Enforcement in Russian Serf Society," Economic History Review (2012)

This article examines questions about contract enforcement in the absence of formal legal institutions, using archival evidence for one particular rural society in pre-emancipation Russia. The evidence presented indicates that enforcement services provided by the local landlord made it possible for Russians from different socioeconomic and legal strata to engage in a wide variety of contractual transactions. However, this system had significant drawbacks in that the poorest serfs could not afford these services and no serf had recourse beyond his local estate.

Despite the unfortunate wording, there's something to this. It makes sense for lords to provide some "public goods," such as adjudication and enforcement of private agreements among subjects. That's both because its value as a "concession" of sorts is probably above the actual cost of providing it, and because it's preferable to make "investments" to preserve some kind of political monopoly rather than letting people get too independent (or letting some other institution come in and provide the service instead).