I want to find legal stuff online like court records etc, especially records for state courts which are hard to find. I checked out Lexis and Westlaw but they are way too expensive. Is there a cheaper way to check state court records, something more along the lines of PACER?
For free stuff, Findlaw is hard to beat.
It depends entirely on the state, but no, there’s no unified standard like there is with the federal courts and PACER. Most state supreme courts will have an online archive, and after that, you’re reliant on the county and circuit levels. For example, I’m in Broward County, Florida. The county courts here have dockets available online to someone with a password, so my secretary can pull them and check to see what was filed, but she can’t pull the actual document like I can on PACER. If I need that, I’ll have to send someone to the courthouse, or call opposing and request a courtesy copy.
It’s alot worse in some of the more hillbilly swamp counties up north. Up there you don’t even get dockets sometimes. Some counties don’t even have a website, last time I checked.
The way around this is to call up the clerk of whichever court directly, get transferred to records, and then walk the person through the search over the phone. Then you can order documents pulled, photocopied and mailed to you.
It’s all unbelievably primitive, and reason #812 why I avoid state court like the plague.
<hijack>
Great username, CKW. Are you living in my lawn right now? Will you stop posting come September and not resurface again till July? 
</hijack>
I agree with, Grossbottom, mostly. The only thing I’d add is that some counties do have freely-accessable databases, but even those don’t usually have the full text or images of documents.
Although I share Billdo’s appreciation for Findlaw, I don’t that it has the type of court records that the OP has in mind. Appellate opinions? Sure. Copies of the complaint filed by the plaintiff last week in the case of Smith v. Jones in Hazzard County? No.
What Random said; although I’ll add that if you’re looking for state court records (as opposed to rulings/ judgments), Westlaw and Lexis likely won’t be much help either (they may tell you that a case has been filed, but you can’t even get the docket online). Some counties have online access to the docket, so you can see what’s been filed; sometimes you can even order the documents online for a fee.
But most of the time, if I want dockets searched, I do it the old-fashioned way, through an attorney service that goes to the courthouse and pulls a docket, which I then look at and order documents from.