October 30, 2026, (Inside AI) — Ropes & Gray, a leading global law firm, is developing a proprietary AI tool with OpenAI to automate the first pass of transactional due diligence. The tool aims to cut the time lawyers spend reviewing contracts from days to hours, allowing them to focus on higher-value judgment work. The firm's partners say the system is designed to mimic the work of a junior-to-mid-level associate, but with the speed and consistency that only machine learning can provide.
The initiative reflects a broader push in the legal industry to deploy AI for document-heavy tasks. Ropes & Gray was an early adopter of AI, and its partnership with OpenAI signals a new phase: moving from off-the-shelf tools to custom-built models that encode a firm's specific expertise. The tool, still in development, has already been tested against human-authored reports from completed deals. Lawyers compared outputs and refined the system's rubric and report format. Early results show the tool can inventory a data room, group related documents by theme, and produce a summary in the firm's signature style.
Why Speed Matters in Deal Diligence
Transactional due diligence is the investigative work a buyer performs before finalizing an acquisition. It involves validating the seller's financial and legal claims, uncovering risks, and parsing thousands of pages of contracts. Traditionally, this requires a team of lawyers working under tight deadlines. The process is data-heavy and often takes weeks. Ropes & Gray's tool is designed to compress that timeline by automating the initial review. It combs through documents, identifies relevant ones, and categorizes them by issue. Then it generates summaries and a draft report. Lawyers can inspect the groupings and confirm nothing is missed.
Howard Glazer, Partner and Head of Practice AI at Ropes & Gray, explains the shift in focus. "It's enabling all the lawyers at our firm to actually get to what we're supposed to be doing," he says. "Our clients don't pay us to review contracts. They pay us to make judgments based on what's in the contracts." That sentiment is echoed by Lichtenstein, a partner involved in the project. "Our lawyers still need to review everything," Lichtenstein says. "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."
The tool's development has focused on material commercial contracts. In working sessions, Ropes & Gray lawyers compared test outputs with human-authored 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 goal is not to replace lawyers but to give them a consistent first pass that frees them to spend more time on analysis and client advice. The firm has publicly described an ambition for the tool to produce a detailed, issue-level diligence report in hours rather than weeks.
This development is part of a larger trend. Law firms and legal departments are increasingly turning to AI to handle repetitive document review. But building a proprietary tool in partnership with a model provider like OpenAI is a notable step. It allows the firm to tailor the AI to its own workflows and standards, rather than relying on generic legal AI products. Ropes & Gray's tool is designed with a consistent query and framework that mimics the exact steps their team would take, from initial reviews to summaries to higher-level reviews. That approach could set a template for other firms looking to build their own AI solutions.
The partnership with OpenAI also includes access to GPT-6 Astra, a model that Ropes & Gray says has helped solve client problems faster. The firm has not disclosed the cost of developing the tool or when it will be fully deployed. But the early testing suggests that the tool performs at a level comparable to a capable junior-to-mid-level associate. That raises questions about how the legal industry will adapt as AI takes on more of the grunt work. If the first pass can be automated, the role of junior associates may shift toward reviewing and refining AI outputs rather than doing the initial review themselves.
Lichtenstein and Glazer offer two lessons from their experience. First, experiment with AI for everything. Lichtenstein has used AI for tasks as varied as finding dress shoes and vibecoding games for his kids. "Just by using it for so many different things, I feel like I've learned a lot of what it does well, how you can make it work better," Lichtenstein explains. "The most rewarding part is not when it does well, it's when you see the mistake and try to figure out what to do. That's where it transformed from something I was playing with to a really powerful professional tool." Second, put clients first. "It's exciting to think there is so much opportunity, but only if we learn how to use it and make sure that our clients are the ones who are winning," Glazer says. "That's what we're focused on: how can we use this to benefit the clients? And if we do that, then everything will work out fine."
The tool's ability to inventory and categorize a data room means it can review full relationships, not isolated documents. That is important in complex deals where contracts often reference each other. By grouping related documents, the tool helps lawyers see the bigger picture. The firm emphasizes that lawyers remain in the loop. They review interim summaries and source documents before delivering work to clients. This human oversight is crucial for quality control and for maintaining client trust.
Read: Prevent AI from Eroding Your Team's Trust
As AI continues to reshape legal work, Ropes & Gray's experiment will be watched closely. The firm's willingness to share details of its development process, including its testing methodology, provides a rare glimpse into how legal AI is built. It also highlights the challenges: ensuring accuracy, maintaining consistency, and integrating AI into existing workflows. For now, the tool is a work in progress. But its potential to accelerate due diligence could give Ropes & Gray a competitive edge in an industry where speed and precision are paramount.
