In the United States, public records constitute a vast reservoir of information, but one that has seemed quite remote and hard to access for most people in the past. Why? — because these billions of records used to be available only at county courthouses and state and federal agencies. That is, in the past, you had to physically hoof it over to your local courthouse and search in person for the records you needed, whether they were real estate records, litigation records, corporate records, or whatever. What a headache!



