Under current U.S. Small Business Administration ('SBA') regulations, franchisees and licensees are not, by virtue of their contractual franchise and license agreements alone, ineligible to bid on small business set-aside procurement contracts or to apply for SBA loans. Although franchise or license relationships do not make franchisees or licensees automatically ineligible, they are cause for affiliation scrutiny by the SBA or protesting bidders if a franchisee or licensee is the successful bidder on a procurement or is an applicant for an SBA loan.

The following is a summary of key issues addressed by Paul Reeve and Jonathan Solish in a session about electronic discovery that they led at the 2006 International Franchise Association Legal Symposium in Washington, DC. The summary was prepared by the authors of the presentation.

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Important rulings of importance to you and your practice.

This summer, the standing committee on the federal rules of the Supreme Court's Judicial Conference will propose for public comment Federal Rule of Evidence 502 and Committee Notes, initially drafted and recommended by the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules. Proposed Rule 502 addresses the waiver of privilege arising from the production of documents: the effect of inadvertent production, the scope of the waiver arising from both inadvertent and intentional production, and ' the subject of this article ' the effect on future claims of privilege of producing documents to the government in the course of an investigation.

TimeMap from CaseSoft (www.casesoft.com) has always been one of the best timeline-graphing tool available to lawyers. The latest version, TimeMap 4, contains a number of significant improvements from the TimeMap 3 version that makes it even more powerful for lawyers. Lawyers and legal IT departments may also be familiar with the other software products in the CaseSoft arsenal: CaseMap, NoteMap, Text-Map and DepPrep.

Superior representation during litigation involves more than persuasion, skill and mastery of the law. It means getting a favorable outcome while being better, faster and more cost-effective than the competition. One of the ways we have been able to achieve litigation success is by partnering with tech-savvy service providers. We have been able to strengthen our position and efficiency by working with a reporting firm that has access to the latest technology for exhibit bundling, on-demand Web access and transcript management. Other paralegals and attorneys in our firm have taken notice ' as have the client and opposing counsel.

Bowman and Brooke LLP has 160 trial lawyers coast-to-coast in Minneapolis, Phoenix, Detroit, San Jose, CA, Los Angeles and Richmond, VA. Together, the firm defends corporations in products liability, toxic torts and other high-stakes litigation throughout all 50 states. <br>The nature of the firm's work ' and litigation in general ' is collaborative, and often dependent upon massive amounts of data. The explosion of documentary evidence brought on by compliance and electronic discovery obligations has made finding, organizing, analyzing and understanding case evidence more challenging than ever before.