In Law.com, Howard Glazer and Joshua Lichtenstein Discuss Ropes & Gray's New AI-Powered Diligence Tool Built With OpenAI

Howard Glazer, head of practice AI and co-head of Ropes & Gray's global private equity transactions practice, and Joshua Lichtenstein, head of the firm's ERISA fiduciary practice and a leader of its AI development efforts, discussed the firm's new proprietary AI-powered diligence review tool, developed in collaboration with OpenAI, in an article published in Law.com.

The article details how the tool, announced as part of OpenAI's launch of Astra for Law, is designed to produce issue-level diligence reports—which typically take several days to compile—in a matter of hours. Howard described how the tool allows attorneys to begin advising clients much earlier in the diligence process. “You start with the data room. In a few hours, you can start applying your judgment. You can start identifying issues that the client should be aware of much earlier in the process,” he said. He also emphasized the firm's focus on embedding institutional knowledge into its AI tools: “Eventually anyone will be able to use a tool like this, but … they won't be able to use our tool. They won't be able to replicate what we do, how we do it, and how we provide that product to a client.”

Joshua explained that the firm's decision to build a proprietary solution was driven by the need for full visibility into how AI tools function, noting that “there are certain types of workflows where the inability to see under the hood actually becomes a real challenge. You may see a good outcome five times, and the sixth time, it sort of goes a little bit off the rails, and you don't know exactly why it happened.” He described how the firm's lawyers and IT staff worked directly with OpenAI's forward deployed engineers through a series of iterative meetings, explaining that “at each turn we explained what our vision was or where we thought that a new iteration could change or get tightened up, and then the OpenAI team would go back and make changes on the basis of the discussion.”

The firm's broader strategic focus, Howard noted, is less on creating time savings than on performing new or better work on behalf of clients. “We're not so interested in saving two hours of our time,” he said. “What we focus on is how and where can we create value, and how and where can we use the assets that are unique to us.”