Seems to me that if you want your quality work and experience to be recognized and valued by your clients, one critical piece to the puzzle is to have ways to provide evidence of your knowledge and experience-- in other words, to at least have ways available to compete in the market on terms other than price and speed, even if in the short run, most clients don't seem to care.  For abstractors to get their clients to recognize and value quality and experience, they themselves must first show that they value quality and experience within their industry. 

The NALTEA Certification provides a way for companies who do care about quality to identify experienced and qualified abstractors who take their profession seriously.  I think that even the blindest consumers of title searches would probably choose a certified abstractor over an uncertified one, all else being equal-- but only if enough experienced abstractors take and pass the test so that the certification program gains some credibility amongst abstractors themselves. after all, if experienced, qualified abstractors don't take NALTEA Certification seriously, why should their clients? 

It's going to take leadership for this NALTEA Certification program to begin paying dividends.  I think this leadership will need to come not only from NALTEA itself in terms of promoting and refining the test, but from experienced and qualified abstractors who are willing to be amongst the first to take the test, to get the ball rolling.