[JohnFen]

> I'd understand trusting it as you would a search engine.

But he didn't do that. Lawyers don't just "trust" the results from a search engine. Part of their job is to confirm facts, not just parrot them.

> It's not like lawyers are visiting court clerk's office to verify every case they find in some online database

No, they don't. Instead, they look them up in the databases that collect these filings. It's effectively the same thing, just much more efficient than physically travelling to various offices.