Ropes & Gray is building a contract-diligence AI tool with OpenAI
Source: OpenAI customer story, "How Ropes & Gray is developing AI for transactional diligence," published October 29, 2026 — https://openai.com/index/ropes-gray-ai-diligence/
Law firm Ropes & Gray is developing a proprietary AI tool for transactional diligence in partnership with OpenAI, according to a customer story OpenAI published on October 29, 2026. The tool is aimed at one of the most document-heavy parts of deal work: the review a buyer does before an acquisition to check the seller's financial and legal claims.
What the tool does
According to OpenAI's write-up, the tool does a "first pass" through a deal's documents. It goes through thousands of pages, identifies the relevant documents, and automatically groups them by themes and issues. It inventories and categorizes a data room, so it can look at whole contractual relationships rather than isolated documents. It then produces summaries and a completed report in Ropes & Gray's own format.
So far, development has focused on material commercial contracts. OpenAI says the firm's lawyers ran working sessions in which they compared test outputs with human-written diligence reports from completed deals. They then refined the rubric and report format based on what the drafts got right and where they fell short.
The firm describes the tool's work as comparable to that of "a capable junior-to-mid-level associate." It is built around a consistent query and framework meant to mirror the steps its team would take, from initial reviews to summaries to higher-level reviews.
Lawyers stay in the loop
The story stresses that the output is a starting point, not a finished product. "Our lawyers still need to review everything," said Josh Lichtenstein, Partner and Head of ERISA Fiduciary Practice at Ropes & Gray. "Because anything that we're going to deliver to a client, we need to be able to stand behind 100%. This is why the tool is designed to allow lawyers to easily review interim summaries and actual documents."
Howard Glazer, the firm's Partner and Head of Practice AI, described the goal this way: "Our clients don't pay us to review contracts. They pay us to make judgments based on what's in the contracts."
The speed claim
Ropes & Gray has publicly described an ambition for the tool to produce a detailed, issue-level diligence report "in hours rather than weeks," according to OpenAI. That is a stated goal, not a measured result. The story includes no benchmark figures, accuracy rates, or time-savings data. It also says that, with tools like the proprietary diligence tool and "GPT‑6 Astra," the firm has been able to solve client problems "far faster than before," but it gives no figures to back that up.
What's next for the firm
Glazer said he thinks the next stage of AI at the firm will be about building collective knowledge, making each lawyer's experience from client meetings and past projects available across the firm. OpenAI's story says the firm has 340 partners and 1,500 lawyers. "That's not just saving time. It's not just saving money," Glazer said. "It's using the AI tools to directly create value."
The story closes with OpenAI's company-reported claim that more than 1 million businesses worldwide are "achieving meaningful results" with OpenAI.
What's confirmed / not confirmed
Confirmed (stated in OpenAI's October 29, 2026 customer story): - Ropes & Gray is developing a proprietary transactional diligence AI tool in partnership with OpenAI. - The tool groups data-room documents by themes and issues and produces summaries and a report in the firm's format. - Initial development has focused on material commercial contracts, and outputs were tested against human-written reports from completed deals. - Lawyers review interim summaries and source documents before anything goes to clients. - The quotes from Josh Lichtenstein and Howard Glazer above appear in the source.
Not confirmed / company-reported only: - "Hours rather than weeks" is a stated ambition, not a measured result. - "Far faster than before" and the "junior-to-mid-level associate" comparison are the firm's own descriptions, with no published data behind them. - The 340 partners / 1,500 lawyers headcount is as reported in OpenAI's story and has not been independently checked. - "More than 1 million businesses" is an OpenAI company-reported figure. - The source does not say which OpenAI model powers the diligence tool, or give a launch date, pricing, or client availability. - The source names "GPT‑6 Astra" but gives no details about it. We have not independently verified this product. - This is a vendor-published customer story. Ropes & Gray has not been contacted, and no independent coverage was checked.
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