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OpenAI announced Astra for Law on September 17, 2026. This new offering is aimed at law firms and legal technology companies developing AI-powered products and workflows for professional legal work.
The platform combines GPT-6 Astra with a legal search index, specialized instructions, and tools focused on legal research and writing. OpenAI also introduced privacy and governance controls alongside 26 ecosystem plugins.
Astra for Law is powered by GPT-6 Astra, which OpenAI describes as its most powerful model to date. One of its key features is a legal search index covering US case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and administrative decisions across more than 230 million URLs.
OpenAI also partnered with Free Law Project to bring its CourtListener case-law collection into the research experience. The platform is designed to help users find relevant authorities, locate specific passages, and understand how those authorities apply to legal questions.
Also Read: OpenAI Launches ChatGPT for Financial Services with GPT-6 Astra
According to OpenAI, Astra for Law passed the overall correctness check on 54% of questions in Vals AI's Legal Research Bench. GPT-6 Astra using only web search scored 38.7% on the same comparison.
The platform also found 24% more reference cases on case-law-focused questions than GPT-6 Astra with web search alone. On an audited set of target passages, OpenAI said Astra for Law retrieved up to 54% more relevant passages from the correct court opinions.
Astra for Law includes custom instructions for legal analysis and writing. These tools can help apply research to a client's facts, develop arguments or deal terms, identify weaknesses, and account for uncertainty.
OpenAI said the system can distinguish a court's holding from other observations and identify cases that could weaken an argument.
For firms handling confidential client information, OpenAI introduced a Trusted Access Program for eligible law firms. Eligible firms can access Zero Data Retention on the API, while ChatGPT Enterprise usage remains excluded from human review by default.
The platform also includes 26 partner-built plugins covering legal practice and business operations. iManage can help lawyers draft a negotiation brief in ChatGPT and save it to a matter file, while Intapp can surface activities that may require a time entry for review. The Thomson Reuters plugin brings HighQ matter context into ChatGPT and previews a CoCounsel Legal connector.
