Keyword Search in DecoverAI: The Complete Operator Reference

DecoverAI's Keyword mode lets you run exact-match searches across your case files using the same Boolean operators you already know from Relativity, Everlaw, and Westlaw. When Keyword is on, we bypass semantic search, embeddings, and AI query rewriting — you get back every document where your terms literally appear, in the combination you asked for, nothing more.

Use Keyword when you want precision. Use Smart (the default) when you want the system to interpret your question and bring back semantically related answers even if they don't share words with your query.

Turning Keyword search on

In the search bar, click the Smart / Keyword toggle and select Keyword. The bar stays in Keyword mode until you switch it back. When Keyword is active, you can paginate through matches and see an exact match count — "About 142 results" rather than a capped preview.

Operator quick reference

Operator details

Boolean operators

• AND, OR, NOT must be uppercase. Lowercase 'and' is just a regular word. This matches the rule most legal platforms use.
• Space-separated terms are joined with AND — john ruffino behaves the same as john AND ruffino.
• A comma is a shortcut for OR — motion, order returns anything containing either word.
• You cannot start a query with NOT and you cannot combine OR with NOT (a OR NOT b is rejected) — both match Relativity's rules.
• AND binds tighter than OR, so A AND B OR C is parsed as (A AND B) OR C.
• Use parentheses when you want a different grouping: A AND (B OR C).

Phrases and proximity

• Wrap a multi-word expression in double quotes to match it exactly: "expert witness report".
• Append ~N to a phrase for proximity: "breach duty"~5 finds the two words within 5 positions of each other while preserving the left-to-right order.
• Proximity with ~N is per-phrase only: "a b"~3 AND c cannot loosen the AND, it only loosens the phrase.

Wildcards

• * matches zero or more characters.
• ? matches exactly one character.
• Leading wildcards (*tract, ?onsent) are rejected — they force an expensive full-index scan and are blocked by most search engines including OpenSearch, Lucene, and SQL full-text.
• Wildcards can appear inside terms too: col*r matches color and colour; g?n matches gun, gin, gen.

NEAR (W/N) — proximity with flexible order

NEAR is the operator to reach for when two or more words should appear near each other but you don't care which comes first. This is how Relativity, Westlaw, and LexisNexis users are used to finding things like 'breach somewhere near duty'.

• Write term W/N term where N is the maximum number of words between them. Order doesn't matter — john W/3 ruffino matches both 'John P. Ruffino' and 'Ruffino, John'.
• Chain with repeated W/N for three or more terms: breach W/5 duty W/5 care finds all three within a 5-word window of each other.
• NEAR binds tighter than AND, so foo W/3 bar AND baz is read as (foo W/3 bar) AND baz — first find foo/bar close together, then require baz anywhere in the same document.
• NEAR operands must be plain terms or wildcard terms. You cannot put a quoted phrase on either side of W/N.

Worked examples

john ruffino

"medical expert report"

(smith OR jones) deposition

breach W/5 duty

deposit* W/10 objection

damages NOT settlement

ischemic W/3 stroke AND "cognitive disability"

Results, pagination, and counts

• Results appear as a flat list, grouped by chunk. Each result links directly to the document viewer at the right page.
• The header shows an exact match count ('About 142 results'), not a sentinel — this number reflects every matching chunk across the whole case, not just the current page.
• Each result card shows a per-document match badge — e.g., '3 hits in this document' — so you can see at a glance which files are the densest matches.
• Use the page controls at the bottom to jump forward and back; Keyword search supports jump-to-page, unlike Smart search which streams results.

Tips and gotchas

• Keyword search is case-insensitive for your terms but case-sensitive for operators. john AND mary works; john and mary treats 'and' as a word.
• If your query has a typo — unmatched parenthesis, unterminated quote, stray W/3 — the search bar shows an inline error pointing at the column where the parser got stuck.
• NEAR is usually cheaper than a loose AND when you're looking for a concept like 'cause of action' that might not appear as an exact phrase. Try cause W/3 action before widening the net.
• Wildcards anchor on the left — contract* is fast, *tract is rejected. If you need to match a suffix, restate it: subcontract* OR contract*.
• Keyword search does not rewrite your query. If you search for M&A and your documents use 'mergers and acquisitions', switch to Smart mode or add both spellings with OR.

Not supported (yet)

• Fuzzy matching (~ after a bare term, as in stein~1)
• Regular expressions (/regex/)
• Field-scoped search (e.g., title:foo)
• Sentence / paragraph proximity (/s, /p in Westlaw)

If your workflow needs one of these, let the DecoverAI team know and we'll prioritize it.