It depends on the state and even the county.  When the on-line documents are maintained by the Register of Deeds, and even utilizing the same servers, there's no difference between searching at the courthouse and searching at home.  Everything I can get at the courthouse I can get an home in several counties.  And I don't even know what a "prots office" is!  Is that Prothonotary?  So such beastie in my state.

 I think that if you are a talented, experienced abstractor utilizing well-maintained equalization/mapping/register of deeds info, you CAN work strictly on line.  You may have to work in several states to make a living, but it's do-able AND IT IS GOING TO EVENTUALLY PUT US ALL OUT OF BUSINESS.  I have been saying this since I got into this business and I still believe that within 10 to 15 years, the counties that AREN'T on line will be so few that most of our easy-stuff searching will be done by the title companies, vendor managers, and/or mortgage companies themselves.  Or the Indian contingent.

I am not an examiner and do not play one on TV.  I accumulate DATA only and let the client do the actual examining.  I provide what RECORDED and any other information I can glean from the mapping department, equalization, etc.  While it is nice to provide that additional information, what we are responsible for and expected to do is gather recorded documents and tax information.  Some "examining" is, of course, necessary to figure out a screwy chain or mystical verbiage on deeds/other docs.  But I would only use the word examine were I going to provide a title commitment that tells the client what they need to do to complete a transaction.

The reason there are monitors at the courthouse is that there are people out there who are doing genealogy, don't want to learn the on-line system, have to do a search that is beyond what's available at the courthouse, etc. etc.  Again:  If the same information is available on line as is at the courthouse, what difference does it make?  I have contacts at all my regular counties (the ones I do myself as opposed to my subcontractors) and I call them if I think they can help me clear up a problem.  I am friends with clerks, treasurers, and especially mapping department personnel.  They understand that it saves me a trip to the courthouse if I have a sticky problem (like conflicting addresses) and have no problems helping me locate the answer.  Can all searching be done on line?  Not yet...but it's coming.  I give it no more than 10 years and 90% will be done on line.

In our county, they no longer print books. We have the monitors for actual searching and printing docs. If a doc is imaged AND in a book they won't let you pull a book and hand it over to be copied - if you want it you MUST use the computer. (We have no copier available for use by anyone other than the clerk).

We use title plants here so most of my work is done in the office rather than the clerk, but I don't see our county as ever being completely online. Images only go back to 1992 even in the clerks office. Other counties in Texas, though, are completely online. Just not mine :-( 

Thanks Linda!

If you ever need anything, I'll be more than willing to help you and anyone else! We're a family, you might say and as we learned in kindergarden, what goes around does come around. So we all help one another as much as possible without ever taking one's time and effort for granted!