1. A computer-implemented method for automatically inserting hyperlinks into an active document, the method comprising: locating and marking automatically one or more legal citations, in the active document within a document-processing application; automatically defining a hyperlink at each location in the active document where the one or more legal citations are found, wherein each hyperlink has a uniform resource locator (URL) including at least a portion of the marked legal citation as a search term and a domain name associated with an online legal research service; and implementing a search based on the included portion of the marked legal citation, using the URL, in response to selection of the hyperlink; wherein the hyperlink does not include a specific document address.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein one or more of the hyperlinks further includes at least one search instruction.