OpenAI on September 17 launched Astra for Law, a version of GPT-6 Astra configured for legal work, calling it the beginning of a long-term investment in law. The product pairs the Astra model with a dedicated legal search index covering more than 230 million URLs of US case law, statutes, regulations and court rules, plus custom instructions for legal analysis and writing.

Distribution starts with API customers including Harvey and Legora, followed by a 'Trusted Access' program aimed at Am Law 200 firms, with a new zero data retention policy for the API and ChatGPT Enterprise use excluded from human review. OpenAI said it worked with firms including Sullivan & Cromwell, Ropes & Gray, Cooley, Latham & Watkins and Wachtell Lipton on testing.

The launch also brought a plugin marketplace (26 vendor plugins including Thomson Reuters, Harvey, Legora and iManage, plus 47 custom skills) and the general availability of ChatGPT for Word. In OpenAI's own benchmark on 200 Vals AI legal-research questions, Astra for Law scored 54.0% correct versus 38.7% for the base model on web search.