Will AI Replace Legal Jobs in Denmark? Here’s What to Do in 2025

AI matters for legal jobs in Denmark in 2025 because a wave of new rules and hard choices is landing on everyday practice: the government's draft Danish AI Law (to supplement the EU AI Act) sets national oversight and enforcement, while landmark moves to curb deepfakes mean individuals may gain copyright over their face, voice and body - giving clients takedown rights and exposing platforms to heavy fines.

That combination pushes work toward compliance audits, AI-aware procurement and IP-savvy contract drafting, plus tougher privacy and liability assessment in litigation and employment matters; see the detailed Denmark overview at Chambers: Artificial Intelligence 2025 - Denmark overview and reporting on the deepfake copyright change in The Guardian: Denmark deepfake copyright change.

Legal teams that learn prompt design, risk registers and vendor clauses fast will stay relevant - consider practical upskilling like Nucamp's Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15 Weeks).

“In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features.” - Jakob Engel‑Schmidt

Denmark's regulatory stance has shifted from guidance to hard deadlines, and that matters for every lawyer drafting contracts, running audits or defending clients: Copenhagen has moved quickly to name national supervisors and flesh out enforcement (the Agency for Digital Government, the Danish Data Protection Authority and the Danish Court Administration are central), aligning national steps with the EU timeline so firms must treat 2025 as a compliance inflection point rather than a distant possibility; see the Denmark practice guide at Chambers AI 2025 Denmark practice guide and reporting on Denmark's early implementation at PPC Land coverage of Denmark's early AI Act implementation.

Key EU milestones - prohibitions and AI‑literacy from 2 Feb 2025, governance and GPAI obligations from 2 Aug 2025 and the full roll‑out of high‑risk rules thereafter - mean Danish legal teams must update procurement and IP clauses, build AI literacy and risk‑register workflows, and plan for tougher market surveillance and penalties (the EU framework foresees large fines for serious breaches); for the official EU schedule see the EU AI Act implementation timeline and schedule.

The practical “so what?” is simple: a missed audit or a weak vendor clause could land a client under a headline fine (up to the multi‑million euro caps signalled in the Act), so checklisting AI governance is now routine legal work, not optional advisory.

AI is already woven into Danish legal practice: firms use generative tools for faster research, contract redlining and client intake, in‑house teams lead adoption and legaltech startups are plugging real gaps in access to law.

A February 2025 survey shows 46% of lawyers now use AI for work - in‑house teams at 72% and large firms at about 50% - while medium and smaller firms trail but are catching up, so AI workflows are moving from pilot projects to billable‑work enhancers; see the LexisNexis adoption overview at LexisNexis: AI adoption amongst lawyers passes tipping point.

Homegrown tools also illustrate practical change: Danish startup Pandektes uses gen‑AI to surface rarely accessible rulings and build searchable knowledge bases for courts and firms, shortening research that once took days into seconds - a reminder that the “so what” is tangible efficiency and wider access to precedent; read the funding story at Artificial Lawyer: Denmark's Pandektes bags €2.9m for gen‑AI legal search.

These shifts push Danish lawyers to pair AI with tight procurement, data‑governance and ethics checks to manage risk while reaping gains.

“Legal professionals currently have access to only a small fraction of the legal resources they need. In Denmark, for example, lawyers can access less than half a percent of all court rulings each year. … What used to take days of legal research, we can now accomplish in seconds. That's a true revolution.” - Casper Laursen, Pandektes

In Denmark the biggest shifts will hit the routine, high-volume tasks first: document review, e‑discovery, contract redlining and preliminary legal research are already being compressed by AI platforms that

scan, analyze and extract key clauses

in minutes, so paralegals and junior associates who now shoulder bulk review work are most exposed (see WorldLawyersForum's overview of contract automation and e‑discovery).

Similarly, client‑intake chatbots and template‑driven drafting threaten repetitive fee-earners while creating demand for in‑house AI specialists and compliance experts described in the Denmark practice guide at Chambers Artificial Intelligence 2025 Denmark practice guide.

By contrast, roles that centre on judgment, courtroom advocacy, bespoke negotiation and ethics oversight - judges, senior litigators and partners providing strategic advice - are least likely to be replaced, because human accountability and professional standards remain central to Danish guidance; the practical challenge is learning to supervise AI outputs safely, as outlined in the sector primer Integrin: AI in the legal profession - challenges and perspectives.

Picture this: what once filled late‑night binders will be reduced to searchable seconds, but the human voice that interprets those seconds will decide who keeps the job.

Denmark's legal sector faces an intertwined set of legal, ethical and liability headaches as AI moves from pilot to practice: data‑protection rules under GDPR and the Danish Data Protection Act demand transparency, DPIAs and careful handling of biometric and special‑category data (see DLA Piper's Denmark data‑protection overview), while the draft Danish AI Law and EU rulebook sharpen questions about human oversight and who carries blame when systems err - providers, deployers or both - so contracts and procurement must allocate liability clearly.

Algorithmic bias, opaque models and deepfakes raise fairness and reputational risk, and courts already wrestle with causation tests and burdens of proof; victims may have rights to compensation but proving harm from a complex model can be hard.

Practical mitigations are emerging: treat developers as high‑duty actors, build auditable logs and RAG/masking controls, and follow a stepwise, compliance‑first integration plan like the nine‑step approach for responsible AI assistants outlined by Securiti - because an unchecked model can turn what should be a routine procurement into a high‑stakes liability dispute and regulatory scrutiny that traces back to contracts, training data and audit trails.

Start with a short, practical checklist: map every AI use across the firm, classify systems by risk under the EU AI Act and run DPIAs for anything high‑risk, then harden procurement and vendor clauses to lock in IP, data‑residency and liability allocation (see the Denmark practice guide at Chambers Artificial Intelligence 2025 Denmark practice guide).

Appoint an AI compliance officer or embed responsibility in a legal team, require AI literacy and role‑specific training (follow the three‑step public sector model in the Digital Hub Denmark report Decoding: AI in public sector digitalisation) and adopt continuous controls: auditable logs, human‑in‑the‑loop checkpoints, red‑teaming and regular accuracy/bias tests so outputs can be explained.

Update standard engagement letters and retainer terms to cover model errors, confidentiality and use of client data, and run tabletop exercises to rehearse incident response.

Practical upskilling matters: reserve seats in targeted programmes like Plesner and Danske Advokater AI training program to give transactional teams the contract and compliance tools they need.

The payoff is tangible - what once took days of legal research can now be surfaced in seconds, but only firms that pair speed with audit trails will keep clients and regulators confident.

“a good, helping hand during a busy workday”

Procurement is the frontline for risk control: Danish teams should treat the EU model contractual AI clauses as a scaffold - not a finished contract - and add concrete IP, data and liability terms before signing anything, because the MCC‑AI intentionally omits standard commercial clauses like IP ownership and delivery terms; see a clear explainer on the MCC‑AI at Explainer: Understanding the EU model contractual AI clauses (Lawdit).

Practical must‑haves for Denmark include explicit ownership or licensing of models, prompts and outputs; a prohibition (or narrow, consented exception) on using client data to train supplier models to avoid GDPR exposure; auditable logging, traceability and supplier cooperation for DPIAs and inspections; and robust indemnities, caps/exclusions and insurance obligations that reflect unresolved liability questions under national and EU rules (the Chambers Denmark AI guide outlines where national law and the draft Danish AI Law intersect with procurement risk: Chambers guide: Artificial Intelligence 2025 - Denmark).

Practically, fill the blank annexes with measurable acceptance criteria, QA routines and update mechanisms so a pilot doesn't become an open‑ended legal exposure as standards and the law evolve.

Public‑sector, court and government‑facing legal roles in Denmark are already changing from advising on one‑off procurements to standing up ongoing governance programs: Copenhagen's draft Danish AI Law (coming into force 2 August 2025 if enacted) folds national oversight into the EU framework and pushes municipalities and courts to adopt DPIAs, human‑in‑the‑loop rules and lifecycle controls; see the Denmark practice guide at Chambers Artificial Intelligence 2025 - Denmark practice guide.

Practical examples matter: public projects from the STAR unemployment‑risk profiler to automated property valuation and tax assessment systems show that lawyers advising agencies must blend administrative‑law tests (magtfordrejningslæren, officialprincippet) with data‑protection work, procurement clauses and transparency mandates, while the DDPA's growing focus on AI in 2025 means more compliance opinions and audits will land on legal desks.

At the same time, the political push to curb deepfakes and give people control over their likenesses tightens the privacy and IP risks government lawyers must police - follow the public discussion in the deepfake coverage at Lexology coverage: Denmark leads battle against AI deepfakes.

Picture a case file where an automated valuation, a profiling score and a DPIA report sit side‑by‑side - those are the new materials courts and municipal legal teams will need to litigate, explain and regulate.

“has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features.” - Jakob Engel‑Schmidt

Skills, training and career moves in Denmark now hinge on practical AI literacy, not vague familiarity: lawyers should prioritise DPIA fluency, vendor‑clause drafting, prompt and model‑output oversight, and the ability to map systems to EU risk classes so advice survives both client scrutiny and regulatory audits; plug into national initiatives like Denmark's AI Skills Pact (targeting 1 million Danes upskilled by 2028) and targeted industry courses - for example the Plesner & Danske Advokater training programme that runs three focused modules on ethics, the EU AI Act/GDPR and contracting - and ground learning in authoritative guidance such as the Chambers Denmark AI practice guide so upskilling matches legal realities.

Short, role‑specific paths (a redline-and‑risk workflow for transactional teams, a DPIA‑plus‑audit track for public‑sector lawyers) will pay off: the lawyer who can explain a DPIA, show auditable logs and redline a model‑use clause in plain Danish will be the sought‑after hire, not the replaced one.

“SDU co-founded Denmark's AI Skills Pact because we have a responsibility to enhance young people's foundational AI competencies and AI literacy.” - Peter Schneider‑Kamp

Denmark's 2025 moment is clear: AI won't magically erase legal careers, but national moves - including the draft Danish AI Law due to take effect 2 August 2025 if enacted - plus new rules to curb deepfakes mean the profession must pivot from ad hoc experiments to governed deployment; see the practical overview in the Chambers and Partners Denmark AI Practice Guide 2025 - trends and developments (Chambers Denmark AI Practice Guide 2025) and reporting on Denmark's deepfake copyright push at the World Economic Forum's coverage of Denmark deepfake legislation (July 2025) (World Economic Forum - Denmark deepfake legislation report).

Practical next steps for Danish lawyers are concrete: map every AI use, run DPIAs for high‑risk systems, harden procurement (IP, training‑data bans, audit rights), embed human‑in‑the‑loop checkpoints, and update engagement letters to reflect model errors and data handling; appointing an AI compliance lead and running role‑specific training turns regulatory risk into a competitive advantage.

Upskilling is urgent - short, applied programmes that teach prompt design, DPIAs and vendor clauses will protect clients and careers, for example consider targeted training like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work - 15‑Week AI at Work bootcamp (Nucamp AI Essentials for Work - 15‑Week bootcamp registration).

Act now: the firms that pair speed with auditable controls will keep the work and the clients, while the hesitant will face the regulatory and market squeeze.

“We've often heard that AI isn't going to replace a lawyer, but a lawyer who understands how to use AI will replace an attorney who does not.”