OpenAI Plans ‘Codex For Legal’

OpenAI is planning to launch a legal AI offering, joining Anthropic and Microsoft in the strategy of providing legal-specific tools for lawyers. Sources told Artificial Lawyer that the plan involves hires from the legal tech world and could be branded as ‘Codex for Legal’.

In terms of how this will look, it’s understood that the current thinking is to have a range of ‘Codex for…..’ offerings all focused on major business verticals, e.g. sales and finance, of which one will be for legal, hence: Codex for Legal. Anthropic initially made the same type of move earlier this year, with a range of enterprise plugins, of which one was for legal.

The legal AI tools created by OpenAI could also take the shape of plugins, as is the case with Claude for Legal, which last week unveiled it had expanded now to 12 plugins, along with a host of MCP connectors to legal tech company software.  

In terms of staffing this, AL has been told that at an executive from a well-known legal tech company – in that case focused on contracts – has already been approached about joining OpenAI to help with this project. It is also understood that several more senior level hires are under consideration.

As to the Codex part, this makes a lot of sense as Codex is OpenAI’s facility for engineers, but it is also rapidly expanding. In fact, just this April, the LLM giant published a blog post with the title ‘Codex for (almost) everything’. At that point they mentioned moving into graphic design and image production as well, but it’s the following passage that really paints a picture:

‘Extending Codex beyond coding – With background computer use, Codex can now use all of the apps on your computer by seeing, clicking, and typing with its own cursor. Multiple agents can work on your Mac in parallel, without interfering with your own work in other apps.’

‘We’re also releasing more than 90 additional plugins, which combine skills, app integrations, and MCP servers to give Codex more ways to gather context and take action across your tools. Some of the new plugins developers will find most useful include Atlassian Rovo to help manage JIRA, CircleCI, CodeRabbit, GitLab Issues, Microsoft Suite, Neon by Databricks, Remotion, Render, and Superpowers.’ (Link)

It’s not then a massive leap to build out some additional ‘enterprise plugins’ of their own, and also to perhaps connect to other legal tech software tools on your desktop.

We will have to wait and see how the offering takes shape. But, the key point here is that Codex is a logical platform from which to build out new vertical offerings – once you have brought in the expertise to shape such plugins and related tools. Also, how this integrates with the regular ChatGPT platform remains to be seen.

It’s also not known how ‘user-friendly’ this will be, i.e. will law firms and inhouse teams need some expert engineering help to put Codex for Legal to work, or will they be able to handle the whole thing intuitively in easy to understand natural language steps? Again, we shall see.

As AL noted on Saturday, after the Claude for Legal expansion webinar, using those plugins, although in a no-code environment, will not be easy for many lawyers without some technical help. But, large firms and sizeable inhouse teams will have such support on hand.  

The move follows last week’s news that OpenAI is working with major investors and consultancy groups to roll out ‘the OpenAI Deployment Company’ – see here – which will create a small army of forward deployed engineers (FDE) to help enterprise customers to turn OpenAI’s LLM capabilities into real gains for the business. In fact, in that article AL wondered whether Sam Altman would make a specific move into legal.

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(Conference Advert for Legal Innovators California – SF – June 10 + 11)

To gain your complimentary pass for the two-day landmark legal AI event in San Francisco, please use the Express Registration here – only for those working within law firms or inhouse teams.

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Is This A Big Deal?

We have gone from Big Tech flirting with the idea of providing legal tech tools, to now three giants – Anthropic, then Microsoft with its Legal Agent, and now OpenAI – all launching, or planning to launch, their own legal specific offering.

In each case there is a battle for the centre of the legal workflow. I.e. where do lawyers ‘live’? And then, how integrated into this environment can your AI tools become?

If you’re already using Word, then a Microsoft legal tool is very immediate – although feedback from the market so far is that the Legal Agent needs to improve.

If you’re going down the Anthropic route, as has Freshfields and some others, then Claude for Legal is also very immediate, and its Claude for Word and Cowork capabilities allow you to operate AI skills and plugins side by side with your daily work.

And now here is OpenAI, the LLM company that really started the whole genAI expansion back in November 2022 and with already broad uptake by individuals and enterprise. And, as noted, it is rolling out an ‘FDE’ team to help organisations bring in AI at scale in a meaningful and useful way.

So, if you are the CTO at a law firm, or head of tech implementation at a large inhouse team, you will soon have not just a mass of legal tech products to consider, but three Big Tech offerings as well, at least for some areas of standard legal work, e.g. contract review.

What Does This Mean For Legal Tech?

The immediate reaction is to see this as more competition for the incumbent legal tech companies – and it clearly is.

However, what OpenAI’s entry into legal tech does – however limited it may be at the beginning of Codex for Legal – is broaden the options. Law firms and legal teams now have even more choice, thus going ‘all in’ with Claude for Legal, for example, gets balanced against other possibilities.

One other aspect here is that naturally Claude for Legal will rely on Anthropic LLMs, Codex for Legal will rely on OpenAI LLMs. Some legal tech companies could argue that they already have all the complex legal workflows, customer engagement and understanding, and FDE teams in place, plus they can choose whichever LLMs to work from as these models evolve over time.

I.e. if you go all-in with one of the Big Tech companies, then you limit your LLM choices. Legal tech companies have no such boundaries, and can provide their outputs via an evolving mix of LLMs, as and when needed for each use case.

Naturally, those firms and teams with the budget can bring in multiple options at once, and some may not want to be locked into one set of LLMs forever either.

That said, more Big Tech legal AI offerings do indeed risk more cannibalisation of what some incumbents offer, especially at the more commoditised end of legal work, e.g. basic doc review.

Artificial Lawyer has to say, legal tech truly has entered a new era.

And all of this and more will be explored at the Legal Innovators California conference in San Francisco – at the heart of the AI industry – on June 10 and 11 – hope to see you there!

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Conference Advert for Legal Innovators California – SF – June 10 + 11

To gain your complimentary pass for the two-day landmark legal AI event in San Francisco, please use the Express Registration here – only for those working within law firms or inhouse teams.