OpenAI has introduced Astra for Law, a specialized version of GPT-6 Astra designed for law firms and legal-software companies. The product combines legal analysis and drafting instructions with a purpose-built search system for US law, aiming to ground responses in searchable legal sources rather than general web results.
Its Legal Search Index can query more than 230 million URLs covering US case law, statutes, regulations, court rules and administrative decisions. Through a partnership with Free Law Project, Astra for Law also accesses the CourtListener collection, which OpenAI says covers more than 99.9% of published US precedential case law.
OpenAI tested the configuration on 200 US legal questions from the private Vals AI Legal Research Bench validation set. At the same maximum reasoning level, Astra for Law passed the benchmark’s correctness check in 54% of cases, compared with 38.7% for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone. On case-law-focused questions, it found 24% more reference cases and, in audited tests, up to 54% more relevant passages from the correct decisions.
Those results measure legal research rather than a system’s ability to practice law. OpenAI says users should verify answers and cited sources before relying on them.
Astra for Law is designed to connect with established legal workflows through 26 partner-built plugins, including integrations for:
- iManage
- Intapp
- DeepJudge
- Relativity
- Clio
Thomson Reuters is also bringing HighQ context into ChatGPT and is preparing a CoCounsel Legal integration, extending OpenAI’s push into enterprise legal tools.
Access is initially limited to selected US law firms through the Trusted Access program in ChatGPT and Codex, while API availability is planned for a later date. Eligible firms can use Zero Data Retention through the API, and ChatGPT Enterprise conversations are excluded from human review by default.
Separately, OpenAI has made ChatGPT available in Microsoft Word, including for the Free tier, for drafting, reviewing and rewriting documents within Word. Astra for Law’s broader rollout and API timing have not yet been detailed.
