Setting a designated publish date for a contract defaults to midnight on that date and our local schools mutually agree to publish contracts at 8am. There is a publish time for almost all other functions of the admissions process (financial aid, etc) so the ability to publish contracts at a specific time would allow us to run and proof them ahead of time and not rush to create all of them that morning.
One workaround is to set the publish date as the next day, then at the appointed time change the publish date to the current day; we did that for our re-enrollment contracts that we wanted to go live at 10 a.m. But I agree, having a publish time would eliminate the need for a workaround and would be very helpful.