OpenAI launches new AI platform for lawyers

OpenAI has unveiled Astra for Law, a new platform built around GPT-6 Astra and specifically configured for professional legal research, analysis and drafting. The aim is not simply to offer professionals a more powerful model, but to create a foundation on which law firms and legal tech companies can develop their own tools, workflows and applications, integrating proprietary expertise, data and methodologies.

One of the central areas is legal research. Astra for Law combines the model with a new legal research index that allows users to query a corpus of more than 230 million URLs, covering US case law, statutes, regulations, court rules and administrative decisions, with daily updates. Integration with the Free Law Project brings CourtListener’s collection into the research experience, covering more than 99.9% of published US case law that carries precedential value. The system is designed not simply to locate a source, but to identify the relevant passages, assess their relevance and apply them to the facts of a case.

According to tests conducted by OpenAI on 200 questions from Vals AI’s Legal Research Bench, Astra for Law passed the overall correctness check in 54% of cases, compared with 38.7% for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone, representing a 40% relative improvement. On questions focused on case law, it also identified 24% more relevant cases. While these figures relate to US law and a specific benchmark, they illustrate the direction of the technology: from AI as a search tool to AI as a legal working environment, sta.es OpenAI.

OpenAI has worked with firms including Sullivan & Cromwell, Ropes & Gray and Cooley to build applications based on their respective professional methodologies. Sullivan & Cromwell has developed an agreement analyser that uses negotiation playbooks and selected precedents to identify contractual risks and suggest redlines and client guidance. Ropes & Gray has built a due diligence system that connects data room information with issues relevant to the transaction. Cooley, meanwhile, has developed GO Public, an application dedicated to the IPO process, from drafting the filing to managing amendments and related risks.

On the legal tech side, OpenAI also says that API customers including Harvey and Legora will be able to build products and workflows on top of Astra for Law. This is complemented by 26 plugins developed by the ecosystem, connecting with tools already used by law firms, from Relativity and Clio to iManage, Intapp, DeepJudge and Thomson Reuters solutions. The stated approach is therefore open and composable: AI does not necessarily have to replace the existing ecosystem, but can connect it and make it more intelligent, says the company.

For selected law firms, the Trusted Access Program provides specific controls for confidential work, including Zero Data Retention on the API and the default exclusion of ChatGPT Enterprise from human review. With Latham & Watkins, OpenAI is also working on information permissions, ethical walls, client instructions and firm-level oversight.