Why the value of judgement and relationships is more important than ever

Anyone who has built a legal practice in Denmark has benefited from a barrier that was rarely discussed. As in any other jurisdiction, Danish law is difficult and learning it well enough to advise international clients takes years. But unlike other European jurisdictions, the leading global law firms have not historically been physically present with offices in Denmark. As a result, the competitive landscape has remained relatively stable, dominated by a handful of large firms and with few new entrants to the Danish market.

That barrier is now coming down.

The rules themselves are not changing. What is changing is how quickly the knowledge behind them can be accessed and processed. Firms in Stockholm, London or New York increasingly have access to AI tools that make it easier to work across jurisdictions and understand markets that once required years of local experience and an office in Copenhagen.

AI is therefore not only changing how legal work is done. It is changing who can credibly compete for it. For the Danish legal market, that is a consequential shift.

The advantage of local knowledge is getting smaller

When I began practising, there were relatively few places to acquire the training required to advise on Danish law at the level international clients expect. The firms able to do so were correspondingly few.

That position was commercially comfortable and easy to assume was permanent. But it was never primarily regulation that protected it. The real barrier was the time required to acquire the knowledge.

Today, that knowledge is becoming easier to access.

In its Future of Professionals Report 2026, Thomson Reuters found that 74 per cent of professionals use AI tools several times a week, based on more than 1,800 respondents in 62 countries. The providers of leading legal AI platforms now report users across more than 50 markets.

The important point is not that lawyers are adopting AI. It is that the same capabilities are becoming available to competitors around the world at roughly the same time.

Whether those tools can already replicate deep expertise in Danish law is another question, and the published evidence remains limited. But the direction is clear: the cost of getting closer to somebody else’s expertise is falling.

That is something every professional services firm should be planning for.

Access to knowledge is not the same as advice

At the same time, easier access to knowledge does not mean that qualified advice becomes easy.

Danish law is not only a body of rules. It is also practice, market understanding, experience with authorities and judgement about how a matter is best moved forward. Those elements are harder to acquire from an AI tool and harder to demonstrate on paper.

That distinction matters. AI can make legal information more accessible. It can help analyse material faster, identify issues and support the preparation of advice. But it does not remove the need to understand the context in which the advice will be used.

A client does not only need to know what the law says. The client needs to know what matters, what is uncertain, what can be negotiated, what is likely to happen in practice and where the real risk lies.

That is where experience still counts.

When the tools converge, other differences matter more

Access to common tools alone does not differentiate. How those tools are implemented, integrated and used may well become a competitive parameter. But technology is not enough on its own.

If firms increasingly use similar tools and have access to much of the same information, attention shifts to the parts of advisory work that are harder to standardise.

Navigating a difficult regulatory question requires experience of engaging with authorities, an understanding of regulatory practice and judgement about how best to move a matter forward. A multi-jurisdictional transaction requires advisers to understand not only the law, but the interests, personalities and pressures around the table.

Data can tell you a great deal about a transaction. It cannot tell you, with certainty, when to push, when to wait or when the person across the table has reached the limit.

Those decisions require judgement.

For Plesner, the implication is that technology and local expertise cannot be treated as alternatives. We need both: the ability to use new tools effectively and the depth of experience, judgement and international relationships that allow us to advise on complex matters across borders.

As access to legal knowledge becomes more global, that combination becomes more important.

Being qualified is not the same as being chosen

There is also a commercial consequence. Cross-border legal work is allocated by people. When an adviser abroad needs Danish counsel, there may be several firms capable of doing the work. From a distance, those firms can look remarkably alike.

I sometimes compare it to arriving at an airport and finding Avis, Hertz and Sixt next to one another. All can provide the same basic service. The question is why you walk towards one desk rather than another.

The legal market is obviously more complex, but the underlying challenge is similar. Being credible enough to make the shortlist is not the same as being the firm someone chooses.

That is where relationships matter.

Over the summer, around 40 lawyers from law firms in more than 30 countries have spent time in our Copenhagen offices. The immediate value of a visit like that is difficult to measure. Its real value may appear years later, when one of those lawyers is asked whom they trust with a matter in Denmark and has a name, a face and an experience to draw on.

That is not networking as decoration. It is part of how international professional services markets work.

Why meeting up still matters

That is also why I do not see technology making international legal relationships less important. Quite the opposite.

AI is very good at processing large amounts of information and making relatively simple tasks easier. At the same time, the world in which our clients operate is becoming more complex: regulation is expanding, geopolitical considerations increasingly shape transactions and many matters span several jurisdictions.

Technology is simplifying parts of the work while the context around the work becomes more complicated. That combination puts greater value on people who can navigate uncertainty together.

I was recently asked what conferences such as the IBA Annual Conference are really for now that so much legal work can be done remotely. My answer was the same as it would have been years ago: relationships, collaboration and visibility.

What has changed is not the need for that. It is how much more of everything else can now be replicated from anywhere. When knowledge becomes easier to access and tools become more alike, knowing who you want beside you when a matter becomes difficult matters more.

AI can help us understand the problem faster. But it cannot decide whom we trust to solve it with us.

By Henrik Rossing Lønberg, Attorney-at-Law, Partner, LL.M., Corporate Finance, Plesner