OpenAI Launches 'Astra for Law': GPT-6 Astra Configured for Legal Work, With a US Case-Law Search Index

The takeaway: OpenAI has released Astra for Law, a version of its GPT-6 Astra model (released earlier this month) configured for legal work. According to LawSites, which covered the launch, it comes with a dedicated legal search index and custom instructions for legal analysis and writing. OpenAI's Jason Boehmig stressed that it is not a new model but a configuration of an existing one. It's aimed at law firms and legal technology companies, and access starts with a limited programme for selected firms.

What it is

According to LawSites' report of OpenAI's announcement and media briefing:

• A legal search index. It can search US case law, statutes, regulations, court rules and administrative decisions across more than 230 million URLs. To build its collection, OpenAI drew on CourtListener, the library run by the non-profit Free Law Project.
• Legal instructions and settings, for tasks such as legal writing, which OpenAI says will grow over time.
• Plugins. 26 from vendors including Thomson Reuters, Harvey, Legora and iManage, nine community plugins built by lawyers and legal engineers, and 47 custom skills.
• OpenAI also announced general availability of ChatGPT for Word.

OpenAI's accuracy claim

According to LawSites, OpenAI says it tested Astra for Law on 200 US legal research questions from the private validation set of Vals AI's Legal Research Bench. At the highest reasoning effort for both systems, OpenAI says it passed the benchmark's overall correctness check on 54% of questions, against 38.7% for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone.

OpenAI also says that's a 40% relative improvement, and that on case-law-focused questions, at the highest reasoning effort, Astra for Law found 24% more reference cases than GPT-6 Astra using web search alone.

These are OpenAI's own tests of its own product, and we haven't checked them. In our view, even on OpenAI's figures it passed that check on about half the questions, so a lawyer would still need to check its work.

Who can use it

According to LawSites:

• It will be available soon to API customers, including Harvey and Legora.
• At first, law firms get it through a "Trusted Access" programme aimed at Am Law 200 firms, through ChatGPT and Codex.
• For qualifying firms, the programme includes zero data retention on the API, and ChatGPT Enterprise use is excluded from human review by anyone at OpenAI.

Asked whether there were exceptions to the zero-data-retention policy, Boehmig said that was a one-sentence summary of an agreement that runs to about 30 pages. "It's definitely more complicated than the one sentence," he said, "but we also feel extremely confident that the 30 pages do meet the need."

The competition

LawSites notes that OpenAI's rival Anthropic had already announced its own push into legal work with Claude for Legal. A disclosure: On The Wire runs on Claude, which is made by Anthropic.

Why it matters

On OpenAI's own figures, the legal configuration, which adds its own search index plus legal instructions and settings, did better than the same model using web search alone. In our view, the search index is the most notable part, though OpenAI's figures don't separate its effect from the rest of the package. For UK readers: as LawSites describes it, the search index covers US law. There's no mention of English, Scottish or other UK law.