I have no problem keeping up with the tecnology and the times provided there is adequate compensation for the effort. If you are talking about providing the same work faster for less compensation, my competition is welcome to the "cheese". Really, what difference does it make if the law of diminishing returns takes over, and there is no money to be made? If the trend among abstractors is again to have lower prices or increased service for no additional compensation foisted upon them by clients,  there is very little future to the industry unless you like working for minimum wage. There are other ways to legitamely make money in this industry without having to sell out to the lowered expectations of clients.

The main thrust of title searching in this area is current owner searches. The price of these searches is already cut to the bone with gas prices, and there are some clients that also want copying costs included. In some areas of the country the abstractors are compensating by increaing their coverage patterns to increase business. This however, results in less time being spent on individual searches. So I suppose the by product of the problem is less quality control on the search.