I come from the fountain pen era of title work.  Full 50 year searches routinely went straight back to the 1860's.  Subdivision titles generally involved title work on farm properties that had been held in the same family from the time of Davy Crockett.  Title work was WORK - & was generally quite tedious.

Abstracting meant preparing an abstract of documents located in the Registry.  We had to memorize long lists of abbreviations & learned how to make tissue tracings of plans.  There were no photocopiers. 

Computers were mainframe machines made by Digital Equipment Corp in Maynard, MA & there was clearly no way those behemoths were ever going to fit in the Registry.  The law firm I worked for started me off at a salary of around $65.00 a week; but they also offered hour & a quarter lunches; 3 weeks of paid vacation; 10 sick days, 5 personal days, fully paid health insurance & even life insurance.

Law firms had exclusive relationships with banks.  My firm *owned* a couple of big banks- we were guaranteed their work no matter what.

 Sounds lovely; but most of the people I knew, including me, were champing at the bit to get out there, & hustle around to make our own money.  Copy machines then computers were the means of my being able to slip my anchor & go out on my own.  So hooray for technology.  I'm all for it.  I don't understand why competition should be a problem for anyone.  I competed with my former employers for title work.  My prices were lower (less overhead) & I was willing to work nights, weekends, whatever.  Here's the thing though.  I am a known quantity- the quality of my work is well known.  People hire me, not based on my price points, although that does come up in the discussion; but because of my reputation for quality work.  I don't for a minute believe that my smart cookie clients are ever going to be hiring someone who offers title work at fire sale prices because they will still be stuck with having to explain to their lenders &, more importantly, to their title insurers that they have yet another title insurance claim due to their decision to hire someone charging less than $10.00 for a title.  That kind of thing will have major negative consequences for them.  So they (intelligent people that they are) hire a local yokel like me.  "You get what you pay for" applies to titles along with everything else in the world.

 I have no concerns that someone who cannot produce a grammatically correct sentence in the English language is ever going to replace me