OpenAI has hired former Ironclad CEO Jason Boehmig to lead its product team responsible for building products for the legal industry.

"Today I am filled with hope. It's my first day at OpenAI, leading product for the legal vertical. I feel lucky to be here," Boehmig said in a LinkedIn post announcing his new role.

"When I look at the legal industry today, it is a lot more vibrant than it was 12 years ago. Law firm leaders rearchitecting their firms for the next hundred years.  GCs and legal ops leaders pushing the limits of what's possible with AI. State bars and pro bono organizations looking for ways we can responsibly and safely close the access to justice gap. Law schools rethinking legal education. And thousands of thriving legal tech startups. It's such an exciting time," Boehmig said.

In his new role, Boehmig will lead product development focused on lawyers as the company expands beyond foundation models into legal-specific AI workflows, plugins, and enterprise agents, aiming to compete with rivals such as Anthropic and Microsoft, which have already introduced similar capabilities.

OpenAI previously partnered with Harvey, a generative AI platform for professionals in law, tax and finance, to create a custom-trained case law model.

Prior to joining OpenAI, Boehmig served as the CEO and founder of the AI contracting platform Ironclad, which manages business contracts for industry leaders including L’Oréal, Shell, and The New York Times.

He also previously served as a corporate attorney at Fenwick & West and is an adjunct professor at the Notre Dame Law School.

Boehmig emphasized in his LinkedIn post that no single company or individual can solve the challenges of AI alone, calling on lawyers and builders to collaborate in using AI responsibly so it benefits society broadly rather than concentrating on advantages at the top. 

"I've always admired the creativity and civic mindedness that lawyers possess. I know that together, we can harness the power of AI to be a force for the good of all society, not just the top," he said.

OpenAI's Hiring Spree

The ChatGPT marker has been on a hiring spree lately. The company plans to nearly double its workforce to 8,000 from 4,5000 by the end of the year, the Financial Times reported. 

OpenAI plans to add headcount across product development, engineering, research and sales.

Veteran Salesforce AgentExchange CEO Brian Landsman as its vice president of global partnerships.

Landsman announced his departure from Salesforce after more than 14 years in a post on X.

Last month, it was announced that one of OpenAI’s top safety experts Aleksander Madry departed the company. 

Madry joined OpenAI in 2024 as one of the company's top safety executives. He served as head of preparedness. A bio of Madry on a Princeton University AI initiative website described the team as protecting against “catastrophic risks related to frontier AI models.” He was later reassigned to a job focused on AI reasoning, CNBC reported at the time.

Meanwhile, one of OpenAI's founding members, Andrej Karpathy, joined Anthropic. Karpathy left OpenAI in February 2024 to launch education startup Eureka Labs.

OpenAI is also stepping up recruitment for "technical ambassadorship" roles aimed at helping businesses get more value from its tools, the report added.

Despite winning its $180 billion lawsuit against Elon Musk, OpenAI missed user growth targets earlier this year, and its CFO has openly worried about paying for compute.

Photo: Shutterstock