Search Tips
Phrase Searching
By default, all queries are treated as a search for the exact phrase entered. For example, if you enter 'court of appeal' as a search term (without the quotes), then documents will only be found that contain that exact phrase.
Logical Operators: and, or and not
Finding All Words
To search for documents that contain all of the words 'court of appeal', in any order, use the word 'and': 'court and of and appeal'.
Finding Any Words
To search for documents that contain any or all of the words 'court of appeal', use the word 'or' between them, like so: 'court or of or appeal'.
Excluding Words
To search for documents that contain the word 'court' but not 'appeal', use the word 'not': 'court not appeal'
Combining Operators
You can use more than one of these operators at the same time. You can also use them in conjunction with phrase searching. For example, to search for documents that contain 'court of appeal' or 'judicial reivew' but not 'high court', you would type 'court of appeal or judicial review not high court'.
Case Sensitivity
If you enter words all in one case, eg 'court' or 'COURT', then your search will be case insensitive. Therefore, 'court' or 'COURT' will both match court, Court, COURT or even CoURt. However, if you enter a term in mixed case, eg Court, then the search will be case sensitive, and so will only match the word exactly as you entered it.
Wildcards and Word Stemming
Using Wildcards
You can use the characters * and ? as wildcards. to search on partial words. For example, 'bank?' will match banks, but not bank or banking, whilst "bank*" will match any word that starts with 'bank', including bank, banks, banking, banker, banked, and so on.
Using Word Stemming
Words that you enter are automatically put through a word stemming engine. For example, if you enter the word 'test', this will match 'tests', 'tested', 'testing' and 'tester' as well as 'test'. If you wish to prevent this from happening, enclose the word or words in double quotes. For example, to search for 'bank transfer' without the words being stemmed, enter "bank transfer" with the quotes.
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