OpenAI announced Astra for Law, a specialized foundation model designed for law firms and legal technology companies to develop AI products and workflows. The system combines GPT‑6 Astra with a legal‑focused search index, custom instructions for analysis, and controls for privacy and governance. API customers such as Harvey and Legora can integrate Astra for Law into their own platforms, while 26 new ecosystem plugins allow connections to existing legal tools like Relativity and Clio.

A legal search index enables Astra for Law to locate relevant U.S. case law, statutes, regulations, and administrative decisions across more than 230 million URLs, with daily updates from the Free Law Project’s CourtListener database, which covers over 99.9 % of published precedential case law. In testing on 200 questions from the Vals AI Legal Research Bench, the full Astra for Law setup achieved a 54 % success rate on the most demanding reasoning tasks, up from 38.7 % for GPT‑6 Astra using standard web search—a 40 % relative improvement. On case‑law‑specific queries, it retrieved 24 % more reference cases and up to 54 % more relevant passages from the correct opinions.

Beyond research, Astra for Law includes custom instructions that guide the model in applying retrieved authorities to client facts, constructing arguments, and flagging weaknesses. In a sample prompt, the model identified two closely matching precedents and produced a memo on a misrepresentation claim, outperforming other frontier models that returned reversed holdings or no relevant cases. The service will initially be offered through a Trusted Access Program, providing zero‑data‑retention APIs and excluding human review for eligible firms.

OpenAI is partnering with firms such as Latham & Watkins to design permission controls, ethical walls, and client‑instruction frameworks. Selected law firms—including Sullivan & Cromwell, Ropes & Gray, and Cooley—have already built prototype tools: an agreement analyzer that surfaces negotiating playbooks, a deal‑diligence system that traces findings to source documents, and a public‑offering workflow that drafts filings and highlights risk areas. The company also announced 26 partner‑built plugins, community‑sourced skills, and general availability of ChatGPT for Word, allowing lawyers to proofread and edit documents within the platform.

OpenAI plans to continue refining Astra for Law based on evaluations and feedback from legal professionals, while expanding its collaborations with firms like Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Organizations interested in early access or integration can contact OpenAI directly.