Coverage
Coverage is a per-county fact, not a national average.
Four things determine whether we can serve a jurisdiction and what a search there actually returns. This page explains all four, because a coverage claim you cannot interrogate is not worth much.
One — access method
How we get into the index sets what you get out.
This is the distinction most coverage claims hide behind a tick mark. We publish it per county, because the method determines whether a clean result means clean or merely means not exposed.
A researcher works at the clerk's counter. The court's own index is in scope, including physical file pulls where the clerk permits them.
A public access terminal inside the courthouse. Scope is whatever the court has chosen to expose there, which is not always the full index.
A written request handled by court staff. Turnaround is set by the clerk's queue rather than by us, which is why it is reported separately.
The court's own online system of record, accessed under credentials. Jurisdiction-limited and subject to the court's published scope.
Two — court of record
Which court actually holds it.
A county is an administrative boundary, not a court. Criminal and civil matters may sit in a superior, district, circuit, state or magistrate court, and some counties hold no court of record at all.
Where a county has no court of record, the order is routed to the district that holds it and the routing is stated on the result rather than quietly absorbed. That is why coverage is published as a court, not as a county name with a tick.
Three — identifiers
What the clerk requires before searching.
Courts differ on what they will accept and what they will match against. A jurisdiction requiring a date of birth cannot be searched on a name alone, and a search run without a required identifier is not a thinner search — it is a different one.
We check identifiers against the target court before dispatch. If something required is missing we ask you, rather than consuming a court fee to return an unusable result.
Four — verification and freshness
A coverage record carries the date it was checked.
Court access changes. Clerks change policy, terminals go offline, portals open, fees move. A coverage list without a date on each row is a snapshot of an unknown moment.
Every row we publish or send carries a verification date. Rows past the freshness window are suppressed rather than shown stale, and the coverage list, any published jurisdiction page and the list we send you all read from one repository — so they cannot disagree.
Pricing model
Two components, always itemised.
A per-search research fee set by volume tier, and the court's own access fee passed through at cost. Where a court charges nothing, nothing is added.
Rates are quoted against your actual jurisdiction mix rather than a published card, because a county-heavy order profile and a portal-heavy one are not the same cost to serve. That is why the coverage list comes first.