Industry Odisha Bureau, Sept 18: OpenAI has launched Astra for Law, a legal focused configuration of its GPT-6 Astra model designed to assist lawyers with case research, legal analysis, drafting and deal reviews.
The system combines GPT-6 Astra with a dedicated Legal Search Index and instructions tailored to legal writing and reasoning. It can help professionals identify precedents, develop arguments, assess deal terms and examine weaknesses or uncertainty in legal positions.
The Legal Search Index covers more than 230 million URLs. This includes US case law, statutes, regulations, court rules and administrative decisions. OpenAI says the index is updated daily and includes case law material from the Free Law Project, which operates CourtListener.
OpenAI said Astra for LAw achieved a 54% overall correctness rate at its highest reasoning setting. Notably, this evaluation involved 200 US legal research questions. This was in comparison with 38.7% for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone. The company also reported improvements in identifying reference cases and relevant passages. These results are based on OpenAI’s reported testing and have not been independently assessed.
Notably, Astra for Law will initially be available to selected US law firms through the Trusted Access programme in ChatGPT and Codex. API access is expected soon, allowing legal technology companies to build products and workflows using the system.
To address confidentiality concerns, eligible firms will receive Zero Data Retention for API use, while CHatGPT Enterprise conversations will not be reviewed by humans by default. OpenAI is also developing controls for managing access to information within law firms.
The company also says that the tool is intended to support lawyers’ expertise and judgment rather than replace professional legal oversight.
