The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
Where do all librarians go to find cost-free access to---United States jurisdictional---court records via electronic search by non-case-number look up?
Trancot
(answering this as an elected official w/ a library background, not specifically as a librarian)
There are a lot of different jurisdictions, and not all make digital versions freely accessible. I remember in the 1990s there were complaints about how companies like LexisNexis and Westlaw effectively 'own' the rights to distribute the laws and court records, which made it difficult for the average citizen to get access.
These days, there are a lot more options -- UCLA has a list of sites to get federal laws from, as well as California and some other state and local laws. Some of those sites are free, while others will charge for retrieval of the documents.
What they don't seem to mention is public.resource.org, a project that's been paying to get public records that are behind paywalls, and making them freely available. As PACER is always growing, I doubt they have a 100% complete record, but as the charges are for printing at the end, it should be possible to do a search on PACER, and then check resource.org's PACER archive to see if they already have a copy. (and if they don't, buy it from PACER and 'recycle' it by sending a copy to resource.org)
In my state (Maryland), there's a search engine available, but for the most part, they just give a listing of the various motions / documents associated with the case, without actually making them available for retrieval.
It's fairly common for public and university libraries to have access to their state and federal case law, but never having worked at one of them, I have no idea if those are paid for by the library system, or in some way complementary. (or if it varies by state).