One of Texas' most well-known legal recruiting firms has been acquired by a Florida company. Prescott Legal -- the 26-year-old Houston legal staffing firm that has placed more than 500 attorneys in Houston, Austin and Dallas in the last five years -- was acquired by Jacksonville, Fla.-based Special Counsel Inc., the legal staffing division of MPS Group, for an undisclosed sum.

"Lauren and I are very pleased to be able to position Prescott with a national leader in legal staffing services," said Larry Prescott, who founded Prescott alongside his wife, Lauren. "Lauren and I are excited about Prescott's working with Special Counsel both here in Texas and across the country."

According to a Special Counsel release, Prescott has received the highest ratings in two national employer surveys in American Lawyer magazine -- the only Texas firm to do so.

"As a life-long resident of Texas, I know that together, Special Counsel and Prescott will be able to offer our client unparalleled search and temporary placement services," said David Maldonado, senior vice president of Special Counsel.

A law firm took the blame Monday for two Open Meetings Act violations during a Campton Hills Electoral Board hearing that dashed one man's bid for office.

Attorney Bill Braithwaite of Arnstein & Lehr LLC said board members should not have been advised to deliberate in private at the Dec. 10 hearing. An attorney for the firm, Donna McDonald, also failed to make sure the closed-doors deliberations were recorded, he said.

"It was not a good night," Braithwaite said. "We are fully responsible."

In an effort to set the record straight, the board plans to reconvene at 6 tonight at Campton Community Center, 5N082 Old LaFox Road, for the sole purpose of deliberating in public.

Last week's hearing centered on objections to election filings of village president candidate Robert Young and village clerk contender Carolyn Higgins. It resulted in Young being kicked off the Feb. 5 ballot.

At the hearing, the board deliberated privately in a back room, upon the advice of McDonald, then returned to public session to vote.

It wasn't until resident Robert Skidmore Jr. filed a complaint Dec. 11 with the Illinois attorney general that officials acknowledged state statute prohibits electoral boards from meeting in private. Municipalities also are required to keep verbatim records of closed-doors discussions.

Skidmore also alleged that Village President Patsy Smith, who agreed to not participate in the hearing because she is running for office, went into the closed session. But Smith and other officials said that didn't happen.

Founded in 1893, Arnstein & Lehr LLC has offices in Chicago and Hoffman Estates. The firm specializes in five areas of law, including local government, according to its Web site.

Texas law firm Hughes & Luce LLP will merge with international law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP.

Partners at both firms today voted to merge the two firms, creating a law firm of more than 1,500 lawyers in 23 offices located throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Dallas-based Hughes and Luce has 150 lawyers across its offices in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth.

The merger will be effective Jan. 1, 2008.

"Partners of both firms believe that K&L Gates will serve Texas businesses as a legal bridge to the globalized economy of the 21st century, just as it has in other parts of the United States, Europe and Asia," says Peter Kalis, K&L Gates' chairman and global managing partner and Edward Coultas, Hughes & Luce's managing partner.

The combined full-service firm will be called Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP and will have offices in Anchorage, Austin, Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane/Coeur d'Alene, Taipei and Washington, D.C.

The California law, however, cannot be enforced without the approval of the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency. The state asked the EPA two years ago for a waiver that would allow it to exceed federal clean-air requirements and regulate cars' greenhouse gas emissions starting with 2009 models.

The EPA has never denied California such a waiver, but the agency has been lobbied by auto companies and by Bush's transportation secretary to deny the request. The state has sued the agency to force a decision, and EPA Administrator Steven Johnson has promised to decide by the end of the year.

Ishii's ruling "leaves the Bush administration as the last remaining roadblock to California's regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions," said state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office defended the law.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed another groundbreaking law last year seeking a 25 percent reduction in all greenhouse gases emitted in California by 2020. He said Wednesday that with motor vehicles contributing nearly 30 percent of those emissions, "it is imperative that we be granted the fuel waiver from the federal government."

Environmental groups that joined the defense of the state law praised the ruling. The law's author, former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, a Los Angeles-area Democrat now with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision "affirms California's legal right to clean its air and protect the health of its citizens."

The ruling was the result of a 2004 lawsuit filed by auto industry trade organizations that wanted to overturn the California law. On Wednesday, the auto industry groups were noncommittal on whether they would appeal, apparently awaiting the EPA decision on the state's waiver request. Dave McCurdy, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, repeated his group's position that the issue should be off-limits for individual states.

"We need a consistent national policy for fuel economy, and this nationwide policy cannot be written by a single state or group of states - only the federal government," he said.

Ishii, however, disagreed with the auto industry's claim that the state's curb on greenhouse gas emissions amounted to a forbidden intrusion on federal regulation of gas mileage. There is no conflict between the federal government's efforts to improve fuel economy and a state's attempts to protect its residents' health and resources by reducing air pollution, the judge said.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions in favor of states and environmental groups that have argued that laws originally enacted to fight smog can be used against greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide and other fumes from tailpipes and smokestacks that scientists believe cause global warming.

Bush opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and says the nation should address the problem through voluntary industry action and modest increases in fuel economy standards. But in April, over Bush administration objections, the Supreme Court ruled that the emissions are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA must regulate them unless it can back a refusal to do so with scientific evidence.

In September, a federal judge in Vermont upheld a state law identical to California's auto emissions statute, a ruling that automakers have appealed. Last month, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the federal government's new miles-per-gallon standards for SUVs and light trucks were too lax because they failed to account for the effect of fuel consumption on global warming.

The California law requires car manufacturers to lower emissions gradually, to 23 percent below current new-car levels by 2012 and 30 percent by 2016. It does not specify how the reductions are to be accomplished, but the state Air Resources Board says automakers can reach the goals by a combination of improving gas mileage, implementing new technology, using alternative fuels and reducing leaks of greenhouse gases from air conditioners.

The lawsuit by auto trade groups, manufacturers and dealers argued that the California statute conflicts with federal law. The suit contended that the only practical way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to increase gas mileage, a subject regulated exclusively by the federal government.

In Wednesday's 57-page ruling, Ishii said California is not directly regulating fuel economy even if its law has the effect of forcing increases in gas mileage.

"The required increase in fuel economy is incidental to the state law's purpose of assuring protection of public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act," Ishii said.

Compliance with the law, he said, "can be at least partially achieved through changes that are not directly reflected in fuel economy improvements," such as using other fuels and improving air conditioners.

Melton said he hoped the council would agree to hire Jackson law firm Coxwell & Associates, which represented the mayor earlier this year in a criminal case.

The Phelps Dunbar firm was hired in August to represent the city in four lawsuits in which Melton was named, but in a letter recently recommended that the city hire another firm in two of those cases. Phelps Dunbar's letter said, "a review of the facts thus far leads us to the conclusion that the mayor was acting in a manner beyond the scope of his duties as mayor if the allegations concerning his conduct are true in each of these instances."

Melton has said he was within his duties when he and his entourage damaged a duplex on Ridgeway Street and when he banged on a resident's front door with a shotgun. Both homeowners sued him and the city.

Phelps Dunbar also recommended that the city pay Melton's legal bills, then ask a court to decide if he should repay the money. The mayor, who originally said he would pay his own fees, agrees with the firm.

"(City) legal has said that council has a fiduciary responsibility to (do) that," Melton said Friday.

Phelps Dunbar charges the city $185 per hour and has recommended Coxwell be paid the same. To date, Phelps Dunbar has billed the city for more than $19,000 related to the four cases.

Merrida Coxwell said he was interested in the cases but said he would step away if they generated undue controversy.

"It would save the city of Jackson a little bit of money," said Coxwell, who along with Dale Danks was a member of Melton's criminal defense team in the duplex case. Melton and his body guards were acquitted in that case.

The council on Dec. 7 discussed the lawsuit legal representation issue in closed session but made no decision.

Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller contends that while she ordered the clerk's office closed promptly at 5 p.m., state law clearly gave attorneys for death row inmate Michael Wayne Richard the power to contact judges on the court directly.

In papers filed in U.S. district court in Austin, Keller said Richard's lawyers made no attempt to contact any judges on the court, even though three were available Sept. 25, the date of Richard's execution in 1986 rape and murder of Marguerite Dixon, a Houston-area mother of seven. Keller said the clerk's office was closed but the court's building remained open.

Richard's lawyers were in Houston. The court is in Austin.

Keller has garnered national attention for refusing to extend the court's closing time prior to Richard's execution, despite calls from Richard's attorneys alerting her office they were experiencing computer problems and begging for extra time. But in a motion, Keller said Texas law "provides a clear and unambiguous avenue for litigants to file documents with the (Court of Criminal Appeals) directly through any of its judges, so Richard did not need the CCA clerk's office to stay open after hours to file his motion."

This is the first time Keller has claimed Richard's lawyers could have directly gone to other judges on the court. She previously has tried to shift blame to Richard's lawyers by saying they had all day to file.

Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, called Keller's argument "shameless."

"Everyone knows that the key is the clerk's office," said Harrington, whose office is representing Richard's daughter, Doreen Anderson, as well as other attorneys who have filed complaints against Keller for her handling of the appeal.

"The clerks are the ones who intercept the calls, who say 'it's shut down,' " Harrington said. "The rules of procedure in the law are supposed to serve justice and here you have a case where a guy's life is at stake. It's literally a matter of life or death and to fall back on some off-the-wall assertion, 'go find a judge and file it that way' is absurd. It makes a farce of the law."

DoubleClick and the FTC have denied that Jones Day has represented the company before the FTC.

But on Thursday, EPIC and CDD filed a second complaint with the FTC, showing a cached Web page claiming that Jones Day is advising DoubleClick "on the international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc." The Jones Day Web page was later changed, the groups said.

EPIC and CDD said Thursday they were filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all records on the relationship between Jones Day and DoubleClick.

One conclusion to draw is that "Jones Day has sought to conceal the nature, scope, and duration of the relationship with its client DoubleClick by altering web pages," said a letter signed by executive directors of both organizations. FTC spokespeople who denied the relationship were "either misinformed or willfully misled the public," the letter says.

An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment on the new complaint. Representatives of Jones Day and DoubleClick weren't immediately available for comment.

The FTC and DoubleClick downplayed the connection Wednesday, saying Jones Day has not advised DoubleClick on matters before the FTC. Instead, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has been DoubleClick's outside counsel since July of 2005 and has advised it in matters before the FTC, DoubleClick said in a statement.

"Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the commission on DoubleClick’s behalf," the company said.

In April, EPIC, CDD, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) asked the FTC to block Google's acquisition of DoubleClick unless the combined company made changes to its privacy practices. The combined company would hold a vast amount of private information on Web users, the groups said.