OpenAI has unveiled Astra for Law, a specialized artificial intelligence foundation designed for law firms and legal technology providers to build products around their own expertise. The new offering pairs the company's most advanced model, GPT-6 Astra, with legal-specific settings, tools, and context for professional legal work. API customers including Harvey and Legora will be able to build on the system as OpenAI continues extending these capabilities to future frontier models.
Frontier intelligence tuned for legal research
Astra for Law combines GPT-6 Astra with a purpose-built legal search index and instructions for legal analysis and writing. The search index draws on more than 230 million URLs spanning U.S. case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and administrative decisions, with sources added daily. OpenAI also incorporates case-law collection from Free Law Project's CourtListener, covering more than 99.9 percent of published U.S. precedential case law.
Benchmarked gains in legal research
OpenAI tested the complete Astra for Law configuration on 200 U.S. legal research questions from the private validation set of Vals AI's Legal Research Bench. At the highest reasoning effort, the new system passed the overall correctness check on 54.0 percent of questions, compared with 38.7 percent for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone. That represents a 40 percent relative improvement, with more comprehensive answers and stronger retrieval of relevant passages and reference cases.
Stronger retrieval of authority
On case-law-focused questions, Astra for Law found 24 percent more reference cases than GPT-6 Astra with web search alone at the highest reasoning effort. It retrieved up to 54 percent more relevant passages from the correct court opinions when compared at the same reasoning effort. These results point to a stronger research foundation for advising on deals, assessing disputes, or developing legal strategy with authorities lawyers can review directly.
Privacy, governance, and trusted access
OpenAI has introduced a Trusted Access Program for eligible law firms to use Astra for Law in professional legal work. The offering includes Zero Data Retention on the API, and ChatGPT Enterprise usage is excluded from human review by default. OpenAI is also working with Latham & Watkins to design information permissions, ethical walls, client instructions, and firm oversight.
Plugins and ecosystem integrations
The launch includes 26 partner-built plugins connecting ChatGPT to specialist legal tools such as iManage, Intapp, DeepJudge, and Thomson Reuters. With iManage, a lawyer can draft a negotiation brief and save it to the matter file, while Intapp can surface activities that may need a time entry for review. Thomson Reuters is bringing HighQ matter context into ChatGPT and previewing a forthcoming CoCounsel Legal connector, while nine community plugins from LegalQuants, LECG, and Skills.law add 47 adaptable custom skills.
Firm-specific AI workflows
OpenAI said selected firms have already used forward-deployed engineers to adapt ChatGPT Enterprise around proprietary data and internal methods. Sullivan & Cromwell built an agreement analyzer that applies negotiating playbooks and precedents to identify risks and generate redlines. Ropes & Gray developed a deal diligence system that traces findings to sources, while Cooley built GO Public to support companies preparing for initial public offerings.
Availability and long-term investment
Astra for Law will be initially offered to selected law firms through Trusted Access in ChatGPT and Codex, and it will soon be available in the API. It will appear in the model picker as GPT-6 Astra Law and in the API as gpt-6-astra-law. OpenAI also made ChatGPT for Word generally available so lawyers can proofread, receive suggested edits, and flag formatting issues in familiar drafting software.
OpenAI says its work with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz will bring litigation and corporate expertise together with frontier research and engineering. The company described its approach as open and composable, allowing firms to use specialist products, bring their own tools and knowledge, and adapt community-built skills to their practice. OpenAI is inviting law firms and legal technology providers to explore early access, build the system into their products, or develop tools around their expertise.