Potential employers wanting what is essentially a verbal acceptance before I even see the terms of the offer?

I've had a couple of job offers recently (turned them down for a variety of reasons) where the conversation goes something like (I've used a lot of creative licence in this to summarise it):

Job: We'd love to make you an offer.

Me: Great - would love to hear more.

Job: Well we'd like a verbal acceptance because then we put you in our system and it generates the contract and everything.

Me: I can't really accept without seeing the contract (I want to know benefits, leave, pay, training, etc.).

Job: That's just how things are done these days.

Is this normal? I'm not talking small companies either I'm talking really, really large companies. This seems so odd to me that they wouldn't say "We'd like to make you an offer at this salary, we'll send you the contract and further info".

This is for in-house legal roles BTW. And I'm based in Australia.

Does it not seem strange? How should I approach this if it comes up for the "dream job" (which of course I would accept - but still this seems very strange).

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