What Daniek Regterschot likes most about being a lawyer is about solving puzzles.
When she talks about her work at Poelmann van den Broek, she describes legal practice less as confrontation and more as construction. Finding the missing piece. Connecting information. Making things fit together in a way that ultimately helps clients move forward.
“That’s what I really like about it,” she says. “You have to find the extra piece to make it all fit together.”
It is probably one of the reasons AI fits so naturally into the way she works.
For Daniek, AI is not a futuristic concept sitting somewhere outside legal practice. It is already embedded into the rhythm of her day. Saga is constantly open on her screen while she works. Not as something separate from her workflow, but as part of it.
“It’s more like an assistant sitting next to me,” she says.
That assistant now supports a surprisingly broad range of work inside her practice. Client intake. Contract reviews. Due diligence. Drafting cease and desist letters. Managing complex negotiations involving large amounts of documentation and information.
In one recent proceeding involving extensive documentation and a highly complex factual background, Saga helped the team structure and navigate the information significantly faster than would previously have been possible. In another example, existing contract templates could be adapted and rebuilt quickly by combining standard frameworks with client-specific context.
The effect is not only speed. It is focus.
By reducing repetitive work, AI allows lawyers to spend more time on interpretation, strategy, and communication with clients. And increasingly, clients expect exactly that.
“Clients rightfully expect us to use AI,” Daniek says. “They use AI themselves too.”
That shift is changing the expectations clients place on law firms. Legal advice is no longer judged only on quality, but also on responsiveness, efficiency, and accessibility. As AI tools become more widely available, clients are becoming more informed and more aware of what technology can accelerate.
That creates pressure on firms to adapt.
“We have to be sharper and faster,” she says.
But what stands out in Daniek’s perspective is that she does not describe AI as replacing legal thinking. Quite the opposite. The more capable AI becomes, the more important human judgement appears to become alongside it.
Because despite all the gains AI creates, there are still clear limits to what it can do reliably.
Daniek speaks very openly about that balance. AI can generate useful drafts, summarise information, and identify patterns quickly. But it can also produce misleading or inaccurate output. Which means effective use depends heavily on the person using it.
“You have to understand what AI can and can’t do,” she says.
That understanding has become one of the central themes in how Poelmann van den Broek approaches adoption internally. The firm invested heavily in onboarding and training from the beginning. The moment Saga was introduced, the entire office participated in adoption sessions focused not just on functionality, but on understanding the technology itself.
Now, the firm continues that process through smaller focus groups, deep-dive sessions, and practice-specific training designed around concrete legal use cases.
For Daniek, adoption is ultimately less about access to tools and more about willingness to engage with them properly.
“You can have a tool,” she says, “but if you’re not using it, it’s useless.”
At the same time, she is careful to emphasise that using AI responsibly requires constant attention. Lawyers cannot simply copy outputs and send them to clients unchecked. The responsibility still sits with the lawyer.
“That’s also the human part of it,” she says. “You have to check it.”
That human layer becomes even more important in client relationships themselves.
One of the more interesting things about AI adoption in legal work is that while certain technical tasks become easier to automate, interpersonal skills become more valuable at the same time. Clients may use AI tools themselves, but they still want someone they can call when situations become difficult, uncertain, or emotionally charged.
“They can’t call AI,” Daniek says.
That simple observation captures something many firms are beginning to realise. Legal work has never only been about producing documents or retrieving information. It is also about trust, reassurance, and helping people navigate difficult decisions.
“The clients trust you,” she says. “You can be a listening ear to the emotion they feel. AI can’t.”
That does not make AI less important. If anything, it makes the distinction between technical efficiency and human value even clearer.
Inside Poelmann van den Broek, AI is increasingly becoming part of the infrastructure of legal work itself. Lawyers use it to process information faster, manage larger volumes of documentation, and sharpen legal analysis. In negotiations and due diligence processes, it helps maintain overview and structure in situations that would otherwise consume enormous amounts of time.
But the firm also appears conscious of the risks that come with overreliance.
Daniek repeatedly returns to the importance of staying mentally engaged while working with AI. The technology can support thinking, but it cannot replace responsibility, professional judgement, or critical review.
“When you’re working with AI, you have to stay focused,” she says.
That balance - between embracing AI fully while still preserving the human side of legal practice - increasingly feels central to the way Poelmann van den Broek approaches innovation more broadly.
The goal is not simply to automate legal work. It is to create better legal work. Faster where possible, but also more strategic, more thoughtful, and ultimately more valuable for clients.
And perhaps that is why Daniek’s description of legal practice as puzzle-solving feels so fitting in the context of AI.
The technology may help surface information more quickly. It may even help organise the pieces. But understanding how those pieces fit together - and what matters most to the client behind them - still remains deeply human work.
