1. A system comprising: a database of legal information, including case law documents, law review articles, and statutes; and at least one client access device having a display operatively coupled to a processing unit, and a memory operatively coupled to the processing unit, the memory including two or more independent applications and a legal-research tool accessible in a context of a first one of the independent applications and accessible in a context of second one of the independent applications, wherein accessing the tool includes a user selecting text, right-clicking a selection device coupled to the client access device and in response to the right-clicking, the tool defines a URL containing at least a portion of the selected text, initiates coupling of the client access device to the database, and if coupling is successful, presents on the display a set of search results based on the selected text.