AI tools ·
OpenAI launches Astra for Law: GPT-6 Astra with a 230-million-URL legal index
OpenAI has launched Astra for Law, a legal-research configuration of its GPT-6 Astra model. Announced September 17, 2026, it pairs the flagship model with a dedicated Legal Search Index spanning more than 230 million URLs of US case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and administrative decisions — updated daily. On 200 US legal research questions from the Vals AI Legal Research Bench, it passed the correctness check on 54.0% of questions, versus 38.7% for the same model with plain web search.
The index gets its depth from a collaboration with the Free Law Project, the nonprofit behind CourtListener, covering more than 99.9% of published US precedential decisions. The “40% improvement” in OpenAI’s announcement is the relative gap between those two scores — the absolute level is 54%, meaning the best configuration still misses nearly half the benchmark’s questions. OpenAI also reports it found 24% more reference cases and retrieved up to 54% more relevant passages from the correct opinions. Retrieval is clearly better; unsupervised legal work is still a long way off.
Access starts narrow: selected firms get it first through a Trusted Access program in ChatGPT and Codex, with API access as gpt-6-astra-law to follow. Twenty-six partner plugins ship at launch — including iManage, Intapp, DeepJudge, and Thomson Reuters — and vendors like Harvey, Legora, Clio, and Relativity can build on the platform. OpenAI says it tested and developed legal AI applications with Sullivan & Cromwell, Ropes & Gray, Cooley, Latham & Watkins, and Wachtell Lipton. Governance is part of the pitch: Zero Data Retention on the API, and ChatGPT Enterprise usage excluded from human review by default.
Why it matters
This is the latest land grab for legal work: Google expanded Gemini Enterprise for legal last month, and Thomson Reuters launched its own Thomson 1.0 model. For firms, the index is the real story — retrieval is the hardest part of legal research, and a maintained 230-million-URL index changes what’s possible. But a 54% benchmark score means every answer still needs a lawyer’s verification.
Sources
- BitsMinds — OpenAI’s Astra for Law scores 54% on legal research
- Cybernews — OpenAI legal AI targets law firms with Astra for Law
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