OpenAI has released Astra for Law, a legal industry-focused version of its latest AI technology, GPT-6 Astra. According to reports from Reuters, the platform was unveiled on September 17 and represents the company's most powerful large language model to date configured specifically for law firms and legal technology companies. The launch represents the latest push by top AI labs into the legal market, where technology companies are racing to capture business from law firms and legal departments. As reported by Legal IT Insider, Jason Boehmig, the head of OpenAI's legal vertical and former founder of Ironclad, emphasized the ecosystem-forward approach, stating "I wanted to make sure we led with an ecosystem-forward approach," adding, "We want to be the home for builders, and arm people with the tools and capability to do that." The company has specifically targeted Am Law 200 firms and legal tech vendors with this new configuration, positioning it as a comprehensive solution for major legal organizations.
As reported by Legal IT Insider, OpenAI's new product combines its Astra model with an index of US case law, statutes, regulations and other legal materials. The platform includes specialized instructions for legal analysis and writing, specifically designed for legal professionals. OpenAI tested Astra for Law on 200 U.S. legal research questions from the private validation set of Vals AI's Legal Research Bench, showing a 40% improvement in correctness compared with GPT-6 Astra using web search alone. On case-law-focused questions, Astra for Law found 24% more reference cases than GPT-6 Astra using web search alone at the highest reasoning effort. The platform features a new legal search index through which users can search for case law, statutes, regulations and court rules, with OpenAI making its caselaw collection available through the platform after long collaboration with the Free Law Project. The legal search index can search U.S. case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and administrative decisions across a corpus of more than 230 million URLs, with sources added daily. Notably, OpenAI suggests that the new functionality "complements the licensed content and specialist products firms rely on from providers such as Thomson Reuters," indicating the platform's complementary rather than competitive approach to existing legal research tools.
According to Legal IT Insider, the launch includes 26 partner plugins from providers including Thomson Reuters, Intapp, Harvey, Legora, DeepJudge and iManage. The 26 partner plugins cover the practice and business of law, with examples including iManage allowing lawyers to draft negotiation briefs in ChatGPT and save them to matter files, Intapp surfacing activities that may need time entry review, and DeepJudge bringing prior deals into comparison. Thomson Reuters is bringing HighQ matter context into ChatGPT and previewing a forthcoming CoCounsel Legal connector. API customers including Harvey and Legora will be able to build on Astra for Law, bringing this intelligence into their own products and workflows. The platform also includes nine community plugins from lawyers and legal engineers at LegalQuants, LECG, and Skills.law, with 47 custom skills that practitioners can adapt, extend, or draw inspiration from. These community plugins give the people closest to the work a way to keep setting the standard for what these skills can do.
As reported by Legal IT Insider, major law firms have built custom applications on the platform. Sullivan & Cromwell has built an agreement analyzer that brings the firm's negotiating playbooks and selected precedents into the review of new deals, with partner John Savva telling Legal IT Insider: "Astra for Legal presents a significant opportunity to consolidate two workflows that have, until now, remained largely separate: researching the law and analyzing legal sources. To date, lawyers have generally had to complete their research first, then use AI to help with analysis, because no model has had the capacity to serve as the sole source of legal authority. Astra for Legal brings us much closer to the day when legal research and analysis can be conducted under one hood, making the legal research and analysis process more effective and efficient." Ropes & Gray has built an M&A diligence system around how lawyers work through data rooms, while Cooley has built GO Public to bring its capital markets expertise into how companies prepare to go public, from drafting IPO filings to identifying risks. Dave Peinsipp, partner and co-chair of Cooley's global capital markets group, said the collaboration allows the firm to rethink how work gets done, moving lawyers and management teams more quickly through intensive preparation into questions requiring judgment, market experience and strategic thinking. Savva noted that "Astra for Legal makes it easier for firms to build tools that leverage their proprietary knowledge. With a base layer of legal knowledge built in, firms can focus on the expertise and approaches that make them distinctive."
According to Legal IT Insider, OpenAI's early trusted access program includes Zero Data Retention and usage of ChatGPT Enterprise is excluded from human review. The company has worked with major firms including Sullivan & Cromwell, Ropes & Gray, Cooley, Latham & Watkins and Wachtell Lipton on testing and developing legal AI applications. OpenAI is working with Latham & Watkins to design for information permissions, ethical walls, client instructions, and firm oversight. Michael Rubin, chair of Latham's AI strategy committee, said the collaboration builds on the firm's broader investments in AI development, governance, and infrastructure, noting that as AI becomes more capable, so too does the ability to deploy it in environments that demand rigorous governance, oversight, and accountability. The platform is initially offered to selected law firms through Trusted Access in ChatGPT and Codex, appearing as 'GPT-6 Astra Law' and in the API as 'gpt-6-astra-law'. Organizations including Sullivan & Cromwell and Harvey have received early access to the configuration, with application programming interface (API) for legal tech vendors expected soon. OpenAI has shared live examples of how firms can turn their own precedents, methods, and judgment into AI tools and workflows built to their standards, with behind-the-scenes engineers working with early adopter firms to adapt ChatGPT Enterprise with custom interfaces and integrations to proprietary data.
