OpenAI launches Astra for Law, an AI foundation for legal work
- Maxime Hiez
- OpenAI
- 22 Sep, 2026
Introduction
OpenAI announces Astra for Law, a foundation that lets law firms and legal technology companies build AI products and workflows around their expertise. The offering combines GPT-6 Astra with parameters, tools, and context tailored to professional legal work.
Check the GPT-6 Astra article HERE.
A dedicated legal research index
Astra for Law relies on a new legal research index that complements the licensed content and specialized products firms already use. The index covers US case law, statutes, regulations, court procedural rules, and administrative decisions across a corpus of more than 230 million URLs, refreshed daily. A partnership with Free Law Project, the organization behind CourtListener, adds to this a case law collection covering more than 99.9% of published precedential US case law.
On the 200 legal research questions from the Legal Research Bench by Vals AI, at maximum reasoning effort :
- Overall accuracy : 54.0% for Astra for Law, compared with 38.7% for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone, a 40% relative improvement.
- Landmark cases found : +24% compared with GPT-6 Astra using web search alone.
- Relevant passages identified : Up to 54% more relevant passages found in the right court decisions.
Beyond research
Custom legal analysis and drafting instructions guide the model in applying this research to the facts of a matter : building arguments or contract clauses, identifying weaknesses and uncertainties, distinguishing the rule of law a court relied on from its other observations.
Several firms have already built tools on this foundation with OpenAI’s engineers :
- Sullivan & Cromwell : A contract analyzer that cross-references a new transaction against the firm’s negotiation guides and precedents.
- Ropes & Gray : A deal due-diligence system that links data room findings back to their source.
- Cooley : GO Public, an IPO preparation tool that automatically carries changes to a deal through the entire filing.
- Harvey : Reports that Astra for Law “performed well on core aspects of legal research : grounding answers in directly relevant sources, citation accuracy, and practical advisory guidance”.
Trust and governance
Law firms have to protect their clients’ confidential information. OpenAI created a dedicated Trusted Access program, which for eligible firms includes a zero data retention policy on the API and exclusion by default from human review on ChatGPT Enterprise. A partnership with Latham & Watkins shapes the design of access permissions, ethical walls, and firm oversight.
The launch also comes with 26 partner plugins connecting ChatGPT to the tools firms already use, including iManage, Intapp, DeepJudge, and Thomson Reuters, along with 9 community plugins and 47 customizable skills.
Availability
Astra for Law is first being offered to a limited number of law firms through Trusted Access in ChatGPT and Codex, with API access planned soon. The model appears as GPT-6 Astra Law in the model picker, and under the identifier gpt-6-astra-law in the API.
Conclusion
Astra for Law follows the same logic as Foundry or Copilot for integrating GPT-6 Astra : rather than a generic model, a specialized foundation connected to the sources that carry authority in the targeted domain. The 40% relative gain on legal research accuracy, combined with the early access already granted to firms like Sullivan & Cromwell and Cooley, positions Astra for Law as a direct competitor to existing specialized legal offerings rather than a simple ChatGPT skin.
Sources
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