Generally you’ve had to pay for an expensive service (Lexus nexus), or go to the courthouse yourself to pull the records. Search was also a bit of a black art.

So generally easy to hide in the noise. Here you can just put in a name, and off you go.

Lexis has the best search capabilities, but there are dozens of cheap clones now that start at $10/month to search these same records.

The public has access to most local court data in my state (Ohio, US) thru websites run by the various local courts. A state-level database for government use is, as far as I know, still not actually available (though it has been in planning and some phase of execution for 10+ years).

> Don't lawyers already have access to case law like this?

Yes, through expensive services like Westlaw and Lexis.