How much of a difference will the new OpenAI model GPT-5 make to legal tech? Who better to ask than GPT-5 itself. Below is what it told Artificial Lawyer. This site also asked: ‘If you could improve any legal tech tool, which one would it be?’ Its answer: CLM….read on.
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AL Qu: ‘How will GPT-5 be better for legal tech applications?’
OpenAI’s GPT-5 Answer:
‘GPT-5’s upgrades line up quite neatly with what you’d want in legal tech—where accuracy, reasoning, and efficient automation matter more than raw creativity. Here’s how the improvements map to that world:
1. Stronger factual accuracy & lower hallucination rates
In law, one wrong case citation or misinterpreted statute can be worse than useless.
GPT-5 has ~26% fewer hallucinations than GPT-4o and its ‘thinking’ mode has ~65% fewer than o3.
This makes it more dependable for:
Summarising legislation
Extracting key clauses from contracts
Drafting legal memos without introducing phantom cases or statutes
2. Deeper reasoning for complex legal analysis
Many legal tasks need multi-step logical chains—e.g., ‘If X clause interacts with Y statute under Z jurisdiction, what’s the effect?’
GPT-5’s built-in deeper reasoning mode lets it run extended, structured thought chains automatically when the problem demands it.
This benefits:
Contract negotiation modelling (predicting likely dispute areas)
Case law analogies (applying precedent to new fact patterns)
Regulatory compliance checks across multiple regimes
3. Better multi-step automation (‘agentic’ tasks)
Legal tech often chains tasks: retrieve docs → classify clauses → extract parties → produce risk summary → suggest edits.
GPT-5 scored 96.7% on tool-chaining benchmarks and uses ~45% fewer tool calls than o3 while still completing more tasks.
This means:
Smoother integrations with legal databases (Lexis, Westlaw, internal doc repositories)
Less wasted API calls (cheaper to run at scale)
More reliable workflow automation
4. More accurate coding for legal AI development
If you’re building legal tech products, GPT-5’s +33% accuracy improvement in code editing means faster prototyping of:
Clause classification models
Legal data parsers
Custom analytics dashboards
It can generate frontend code for contract review UIs or backend parsing logic with fewer fixes needed.
5. Better instruction-following & safety
Legal clients need highly structured, compliance-safe outputs. GPT-5’s improved ‘safe completions’ and reduced sycophancy make it more consistent when you say:
‘Summarise only in bullet points’
‘Use exact statutory wording’
‘Cite only UK law sources, no US cases’
6. Cost & efficiency advantages
If you’re processing thousands of contracts or discovery docs, even 20–30% fewer wasted tokens/tool calls means big savings.
In multi-jurisdiction projects, GPT-5’s better auto-reasoning cuts down on having to re-prompt when the model misunderstands scope.
Bottom line:
For legal tech, GPT-5 isn’t just a ‘smarter chatbot.’ It’s a more trustworthy analyst, a steadier workflow orchestrator, and a better coding partner—reducing risk while speeding up legal automation pipelines.’
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AL Qu: ‘If you could improve any legal tech tool, which one would it be?’
OpenAI’s GPT-5 Answer:
‘If I could pick one legal tech tool to improve with GPT-5’s strengths, I’d target contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms — especially the review, negotiation, and compliance tracking modules.
Here’s why CLM is the sweet spot:
Why CLM Is the Best Target for GPT-5 Enhancement
It’s where most lawyers actually spend time.
Contract review, redlining, and post-signature compliance eat up thousands of hours across firms and in-house teams.
Even a small accuracy gain has a huge compounding ROI.
The work is high-risk, high-reward.
Miss a clause → risk litigation or non-compliance.
Overlook a beneficial term → lose negotiation leverage.
CLM workflows are already multi-step, so GPT-5’s ‘agentic’ tool skills shine.
Parse doc → detect clause type → classify risk → suggest edits → update database.
GPT-5 can do this with fewer tool calls, cheaper compute, and higher reliability.
Example: GPT-5-Enhanced CLM Flow
Ingestion:
GPT-5 detects contract type, parties, governing law, and key dates.
Risk Scoring:
Applies jurisdiction-specific thresholds (e.g., UK vs. US data breach clauses).
Flags risky indemnity terms with explanation + case law references.
Negotiation Support:
Generates redlines with rationale grounded in precedent and business policy.
Simulates counterparty objections and suggests fallback positions.
Post-Signature Compliance:
Monitors obligations (payments, notices, renewals).
Auto-drafts alerts and compliance reports.
Why this over, say, e-discovery or legal research?
E-discovery already has high-performing AI pipelines in big firms.
Legal research is constrained by licensing and database access.
CLM is a big, still-fragmented market where a leap in accuracy, reliability, and integration speed could create a dominant product — especially if pitched as ‘GPT-5-inside’ to enterprise buyers.
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AL Comment:
So, there you go. Of course, as with all LLM outputs – even now – take it all with a pinch of salt and think through what it’s written, rather than take it as gospel.
But, either way, this demonstrates GPT-5’s thoughtfulness and its ability to present reasoned arguments, as well as to really get into the detail of what is a very niche subject. In short, just consider where we were pre-Nov 2022, now consider what can be done with just a couple of prompts.
Clearly, GPT-5 will be making a significant – positive – impact on what many legal AI tools can do…because what they can do is fundamentally based on models such as GPT-5.
Plus…..LLMs will still get better, even if incremental advances may not always be so significant.
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Legal Innovators Conferences in New York and London – Both In November ’25
If you’d like to stay ahead of the legal AI curve….then come along to Legal Innovators New York, Nov 19 + 20, where the brightest minds will be sharing their insights on where we are now and where we are heading.
And also, Legal Innovators UK – Nov 4 + 5 + 6
Both events, as always, are organised by the awesome Cosmonauts team!
Please get in contact with them if you’d like to take part.
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