Key Business and Legal Trends in 2025

Navigating the Legal Landscape: Key Trends for Businesses in 2025

Kim, Lahey & Killough founding attorney Doug Kim joined Mike Switzer on South Carolina Public Radio’s South Carolina Business Review to discuss the new legal landscape for businesses in 2025. Key points include:

Disruptive Technology’s Impact

AI is rapidly reshaping business and the legal profession, presenting both opportunities and challenges. Unlike previous technological shifts, AI is accelerating change at an exponential rate, forcing businesses and law firms to adapt faster than before.

Key Implications for Businesses

1. Technology Adoption: Companies must be prepared to leverage new technologies quickly and strategically.

2. Increased M&A Activity: With substantial cash reserves and a pro-business climate, mergers and acquisitions are expected to increase.

3. Due Diligence Preparedness: Doug strongly advises businesses to begin due diligence preparations in anticipation of potential acquisitions.

In addition, the legal profession itself is experiencing significant disruption. AI tools are enhancing efficiency in research, particularly with regard to patent and trademark searches. Kim emphasizes that AI won’t replace lawyers, but lawyers and law firms that adopt AI technologies will likely outperform those that resist change.

In 2025, businesses must stay agile, embrace technology, and quickly manage the risks associated with new technologies and business models.

Listen to the full interview here or read the full transcript, below.

 

Full Transcript of The new legal landscape for businesses, an interview with Doug Kim on Mike Switzer’s South Carolina Business Review.
Broadcast on South Carolina Public Radio on January 23, 2025

[00:09.710] – Mike Switzer

Hello and welcome to the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer.
As this New Year with a new administration in Washington just getting started, many businesses may be looking at the legal landscape and what they can expect to see in 2025. Doug Kim is an attorney in Greenville, South Carolina, where he joins us from now by phone to help us with this topic.
Doug, welcome to the program.

[00:39.990] – Doug Kim

How are you doing? Thanks for having me.

[00:41.620] – Mike Switzer

Great. Let’s just go ahead and kick off the discussion with an overview of what you see happening in the legal world this year.

[00:49.970] – Doug Kim

Well, it’s going to be quite a few fast changes, and I’ll give you my opinion of the analogies of why I think this is going to happen. And that is, Windows came out many years ago, and it made software accessible to the public in general, which was disruptive for society and business. 2007, the iPhone comes out and it creates software in your hand, again, disruptive for the benefit of increased technology – massive changes in business and society. What’s happening now is we have AI, which is even faster, that’s doing a couple of things. This is what’s driving changes in the legal side, I think. Ai has made everybody feel like, Oh, there’s this new technology. Gosh, we’re behind. We need to be stepping up. That’s one piece. Another piece is you’ve got a new administration who, by all accounts, seems to be reducing regulations and is going to be pro-business. Not that other administrations haven’t been, but this particular one seems to be more pro-business. Add on top of that, you’ve got a bunch of pent-up demand: during election years, businesses tend to, I don’t want to say stall, but they tend to not make much major decisions until they see what’s going on.

There’s a lot of money sitting on the guidelines to move projects forward. So, with all that said, you add the technology changes, the environmental changes, the geopolitical changes, and the fact there’s a lot of cash sitting out there, you’re going to watch the legal profession really have a lot of, quote, “pressures on it.” Our clients are going to be pressing us to be able to adopt technology and candidly, probably move faster than the legal profession is used to.

[02:22.290] – Mike Switzer

Okay. It sounds to me like a massive headache year for you.

[02:25.480] – Doug Kim

It could be based on the law firm’s attitude. It’s not uncommon for technology to change the law. For example, in one area of the law, the right to privacy. Well, everybody’s got a phone in their pocket now, and that phone has a camera. What is your expectation of privacy if everybody can video and photograph you now? So the way the law changed was because the technology changes. The law firms are just going to have to say, “All right, I need to understand this.” I need to step up and say, Here the deal is, as well as how these businesses are adopting it and say, “Okay, how do I manage the risk?”, which is a lot of what lawyers do with these new technologies and these new ways of doing business. And how do I keep myself up to speed so I can respond properly and competently to my client’s demands? I think when you say it could be a lot of headaches, it’s going to require lawyers to educate themselves in areas faster than maybe they’re accustomed.

[03:18.490] – Mike Switzer

Maybe giving up some of the bread and butter business that’s been the thing. In any way, you see a lot of consumers and businesses turning to alternative legal service providers like Legal Zoom.

[03:32.980] – Doug Kim

That’s exactly right. There is definitely a place for that. The legal services traditionally required a lawyer and a lawyer thinking to do some of this stuff. With the advent of some of these other businesses being in those areas, particularly with the leveraging of technology, it may not be a lawyer’s job, either 100% or maybe not even at all. I’ll give you a good example. The type of work that I principally do is intellectual property. We used to have to go hire people to do patent searches and trademark searches for us. Over the years, these patent and trademark databases have been developed by government agencies, Google patents, things like that. You can take the current technology with AI and do a patent or trademark search much more efficiently and faster than a human being could have done it years ago. Some of those tools that are out there are going to reduce, I don’t think eliminate…but reduce the need for some of the legal services that typically an attorney would do. Ai is not going to replace lawyers. It’s not going to do that. However, the law firms that adopt AI will probably replace the ones that don’t.

[04:35.080] – Mike Switzer

What is your recommendation for businesses that are listening right now then on what they should be doing to take advantage of these trends?

[04:41.730] – Doug Kim

If I had to say it in one sentence: Start thinking about getting ready for due diligence. You can Google due diligence and see what that takes. I mean, anybody can do that. If I’m right and there’s going to be an increased M&A activity and companies are going to be acquiring technology, not developing it, a company that wants to be a target for an acquisition would serve themselves well getting ready for this process.

[05:05.080] – Mike Switzer

All right, Doug. Great information. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.

[05:09.120] – Doug Kim

Happy to do it. Enjoyed it.

[05:10.870] – Mike Switzer

Doug Kim is an attorney. He joined us by phone from his office in Greenville, South Carolina. Remember, you can hear this show again at our web page, southcarolinapublicradio dot org. You can hear us again wherever you find podcasts with the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer.

[05:33.700] – Announcer

The views expressed on the South Carolina Business Review do not necessarily reflect those of South Carolina Public Radio.