Cooley, the international law firm that led more venture-backed IPOs than any other firm over the past two decades, has built a proprietary AI product called GO Public on ChatGPT Work. The system processes the vast information load of an initial public offering to surface issues earlier and give lawyers a tailored starting point for review, aiming to shorten the time it takes to bring a company to market.
In 2025, Cooley advised on 180 deals globally, totaling more than $51.5 billion in deal volume. The firm holds a decade-long position at the top of the US issuer-side IPO market. Capital markets work involves synthesizing and analyzing enormous amounts of information - a reality that David Wang, Chief Innovation Officer at Cooley, describes plainly: "For our lawyers, it's always very busy. When there's an IPO, there are thousands of things that need to be done constantly."
GO Public uses an agentic harness built on ChatGPT Work that analyzes information so lawyers can review and validate the output. The workflow assembles a starting point for an IPO that draws from client-provided information, relevant public sources, and carefully curated precedents. Wang said the collaboration with OpenAI combines subject-matter expertise and AI engineering to ensure the right processes produce the right outcomes.
Moving from precedent to client-first preparation
Before GO Public, teams typically began with a precedent from a comparable company and adapted it. The new system reverses that approach. It starts with the client's own information and builds outward. "GO Public helps us move through the intensive preparation faster so lawyers and management teams can spend more time on the decisions that shape the transaction - where judgment, market experience and strategic thinking matter most," said Dave Peinsipp, partner and co-chair of Cooley's global capital markets group.
Cooley's legal engineers, innovation counsel, and practitioners translated the firm's capital markets experience into a controlled agentic workflow. The harness specifies which steps agents perform automatically, where lawyers must validate the work, and how the pieces fit together. Information curated from previous analyses provides what Wang calls "baked-in know-how."
Redirecting effort toward substantive decisions
"The amazing thing about integrating ChatGPT Work into GO Public is that it brings intelligence to this very large array of information that had to be manually sorted before," Wang said. "Once you do that first cut, you're able to really concentrate the human effort and expertise on the highest value surface areas."
Peinsipp frames the goal as speed to quality, not speed for its own sake. "The point isn't simply to do the same work faster. It's to get to a strong starting point sooner, so our lawyers can spend more time applying judgment, challenging the disclosure and thinking strategically about the issues that matter most to the company."
For management teams, the benefit extends beyond legal preparation. IPO work competes for attention from executives who are also running fast-moving businesses. "ChatGPT Work allows us to move more quickly through intensive preparation and give valuable time back to management," Peinsipp said. "We want their attention focused where only they can add value - on the business, the story and the decisions that will ultimately shape the offering."
Rethinking legal work with AI
Wang acknowledged that the legal industry has been slow to change. "Traditionally, the legal industry has been relatively change-averse," he said. But AI gives Cooley an opening to rethink how capital markets work gets done while preserving the professional obligations lawyers carry. "As attorneys, we have professional duties and obligations to make sure that the best, most legally defensible outcome occurs for our clients, and that just takes a lot of work."
GO Public is built to help lawyers consider more information while directing their expertise toward the decisions that matter most. Peinsipp sees it as a starting point for a broader shift. "GO Public is our vision for the future of capital markets practice. Our collaboration with OpenAI has allowed us to rethink how this work gets done. We see enormous potential not only for IPOs but for capital markets transactions more broadly."
Why this matters for legal professionals
GO Public demonstrates a concrete application of AI for Legal work that does not replace lawyer judgment - it repositions it. The system handles the first pass of information synthesis that previously consumed associates' time, allowing lawyers to focus earlier on disclosure challenges and strategic decisions. For paralegals and junior associates, the shift means less manual document sorting and more exposure to the substantive analysis that builds expertise. Professionals looking to develop skills in this area can explore an AI Learning Path for Paralegals that covers document review and analysis workflows. The Cooley model suggests that AI adoption in legal practice will reward those who can pair technical tooling with the professional judgment that clients and regulators require.
Your membership also unlocks:
