This is a memory I have from my time in Massachusetts.  Don't know if the law's correct anymore, but in Massachusetts, when you sued someone, the first thing you would do is get an attachment on the property, which then had to be recorded in the Registry of Deeds and was a lien on the property.  If you won your lawsuit, you could then enforce the attachment through a process called execution.

In one courthouse, there used to be only one pay phone in the Registry which was used by the abstractors for both incoming and outgoing phone calls.  Taped to the phone was a piece of paper saying "Anybody using this phone for more than five minutes will be executed."  Scribbled underneath it "Don't I have to be attached first?"