How Cooley Is Reshaping the IPO Process with OpenAI: Inside GoPublic

Top-tier law firm Cooley is using AI to fundamentally redefine how companies go public. Built on OpenAI's technology, its solution "GoPublic" dramatically compresses the traditionally lengthy IPO preparation process — saving clients time, energy, and management bandwidth.

Why IPOs Are So Resource-Intensive

An IPO is a landmark milestone for any company, but the operational complexity behind it far exceeds what most people imagine. As Cooley put it: "When an IPO kicks off, there are thousands of things that need to get done continuously."

These tasks are not only enormous in volume — they also require direct involvement from a company's senior leadership. Drafting the prospectus, managing disclosures, and navigating compliance reviews all typically demand that the client's top executives personally provide information and attend drafting sessions. For a company in the critical window before going public, this means its most valuable management resources are heavily consumed.

The IPO process typically spans 6 to 12 months and involves coordinated efforts among law firms, investment banks (underwriters), auditors, regulators (such as the U.S. SEC), and company management. The centerpiece is a registration statement filed with regulators — such as the S-1 form — which includes a draft prospectus with detailed disclosures of financials, business model, risk factors, and corporate governance. Each round of SEC comment letters can trigger new rounds of revisions and supplements, and any changes to information require legal counsel to re-verify compliance. On top of that, the Roadshow phase requires executives to meet dozens of institutional investors intensively over several weeks. This heavy drain on senior management's time and attention is precisely the core problem GoPublic is designed to solve.

GoPublic's Core Value: Giving Time Back to Clients

Cooley emphasizes that everything it does starts with the client. "We always start with the client, because that's what matters most to us." In a high-intensity project like an IPO, the real challenge isn't just getting things done — it's about how to save the client's time, energy, and bandwidth.

That's exactly the pain point GoPublic is designed to address. By embedding OpenAI's capabilities into the IPO workflow, the firm can move faster and surface meaningful content to decision-makers earlier in the process.

Freeing Up Executive Resources

Under the traditional process, executives are repeatedly pulled into drafting sessions and information-gathering rounds. With GoPublic, much of the preparatory and repetitive work can be AI-assisted, allowing executives to focus their time on the critical decision points that truly require their judgment.

Identifying Issues Earlier, Reaching the Market Faster

Another key advantage GoPublic delivers is earlier issue detection. Cooley notes that the solution enables teams to "identify problems earlier," preventing costly rework from surfacing late in the process.

Surfacing compliance risks and potential red flags earlier not only improves the overall experience but also gives companies a better chance of completing their listing more quickly. In Cooley's own words, the ultimate goal is for "everyone to have a better experience and, hopefully, get to market faster."

A Signal That AI Is Entering Professional Services

Cooley's case reflects a broader trend: generative AI is moving beyond general-purpose applications into highly specialized, high-value industry workflows. Legal and investment banking services have long been considered knowledge-intensive domains resistant to automation — yet GoPublic demonstrates that AI is now capable of taking on substantive work within these complex processes.

For law firms, this is both an efficiency tool and a source of competitive differentiation. Those who can deeply integrate AI into their core workflows first will build structural advantages in service speed and client experience. For companies preparing to go public, this could mean lower time costs and a smoother path to market.

Generative AI applications in the legal sector typically operate at several layers: document review and summarization (contract analysis, due diligence), drafting assistance (prospectus sections, disclosure language generation), compliance checking (mapping text against regulatory rule sets), and project management (tracking action items and deadlines). What GoPublic represents is a deeper level of integration — embedding AI into the core workflow rather than using it as a standalone tool. This approach mirrors the direction taken by legal tech companies like Harvey AI and Ironclad, but the fact that it's being deployed by a top-tier firm in-house carries a stronger signal: it means traditional legal services institutions are beginning to actively use AI to reconstruct their own service delivery models, rather than treating AI purely as an internal productivity tool.