  A principal hires an agent to acquire soft information about an unknown
state. Even though neither how the agent learns nor what the agent discovers
are contractible, we show the principal is unconstrained as to what information
the agent can be induced to acquire and report honestly. When the agent is risk
neutral, and a) is not asked to learn too much, b) can acquire information
sufficiently cheaply, or c) can face sufficiently large penalties, the
principal can attain the first-best outcome. We discuss the effect of risk
aversion (on the part of the agent) and characterize the second-best contracts.
