OpenAI today introduced Astra for Law, a packaged offering that pairs the company’s GPT-6 Astra model with a legal research index, curated instructions and integrations designed for professional legal workflows. Astra for Law is positioned as a way for law firms and legal-technology vendors to embed frontier AI into research, drafting and other practice tasks while keeping client data under firm-defined controls.
The core components of Astra for Law include GPT-6 Astra itself, a legal search index covering more than 230 million URLs and a set of curated instructions intended to guide legal analysis and drafting. OpenAI says the search index is updated daily and incorporates a collaboration with the Free Law Project to integrate CourtListener’s case-law collection, which the nonprofit reports covers more than 99.9% of published U.S. precedential case law.
To connect the model to firm systems and specialist tools, Astra for Law launches with 26 partner-built plugins and additional community-built plugins and custom skills. OpenAI cited partner integrations such as iManage, Intapp and DeepJudge, plus a HighQ preview from Thomson Reuters. ChatGPT for Word is also being made generally available as part of the drafting and proofreading toolset that accompanies the package.
OpenAI published benchmark results using the private validation set of Vals AI’s Legal Research Bench to illustrate the offering’s performance in a legal research context. At the highest reasoning effort setting, Astra for Law passed the evaluation’s overall correctness check on 54.0% of questions. By comparison, GPT-6 Astra using web search alone passed 38.7%, which OpenAI frames as a roughly 40% relative improvement in overall correctness. For case-law-focused tasks, the company reported that Astra for Law found 24% more reference cases than GPT-6 Astra with web search alone and retrieved up to 54% more relevant passages from correct opinions at the same reasoning effort.
OpenAI emphasizes that these benchmark figures reflect the combined effect of the model, the legal index and the curated instructions — the configuration is presented as producing stronger research foundations that lawyers can examine and rely on. The company describes Astra for Law as a composable platform: firms can connect specialist products and proprietary data, and define permitted sources and review processes according to their own protocols.
To support firm governance and privacy requirements, OpenAI is offering Astra for Law initially through a Trusted Access program in ChatGPT and Codex, with API availability planned soon. In ChatGPT’s model picker the option will appear as GPT-6 Astra Law and the API model name will be gpt-6-astra-law. For eligible participants, Trusted Access includes Zero Data Retention on the API and defaults ChatGPT Enterprise usage to exclusion from human review. OpenAI also reports active work with Latham & Watkins on information permissions, ethical walls, client instructions and firm oversight to shape the product’s governance features.
Several law firms are already building bespoke tools around the platform. OpenAI described Sullivan & Cromwell’s agreement analyzer that integrates firm negotiating playbooks and precedents into deal review; Ropes & Gray’s deal diligence system that maps findings to data-room sources and deal risks; and Cooley’s GO Public tool for capital markets work. The company additionally noted collaboration with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to explore Astra for Law applications for litigation and corporate practice. Firms may develop in-house or work with partner vendors to assemble the workflow combinations they need.
The plugin ecosystem at launch includes 26 partner-built plugins across practice and business functions and nine community plugins from legal engineers and firms such as LegalQuants, LECG and Skills.law. OpenAI said community contributions include 47 custom skills that practitioners can adapt for specific tasks, and emphasized that partners can continue developing their own applications while firms determine how to combine capabilities.
Astra for Law will be made available to selected firms through Trusted Access first, with API access to follow in the near future. OpenAI said it will continue refining the model, settings, tools and instructions in collaboration with legal partners, and will run ongoing evaluations and feedback cycles as the product evolves. Firms and legal‑tech vendors interested in early access or integrating Astra for Law into their products were invited to contact OpenAI.
Taken together, Astra for Law represents OpenAI’s effort to package its most advanced model with domain-specific data and governance features tailored to the legal sector. The offering aims to give firms a way to accelerate research and drafting workflows while maintaining firm-defined controls over data, sources and review practices.
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