Pro bono not a one-way street (Editorial)

The Maryland farm community has been rankled — and that’s a modest characterization — by the fact that the University of Maryland Law School is providing pro bono (free) legal counsel to the Waterkeeper Alliance in its lawsuit against Perdue Farms and a Berlin poultry operation.
Angry protests to university officials that the state’s land grant university is lending its support to the plaintiffs in a suit against a Maryland farm family and the state’s iconic poultry company have accomplished nothing and have apparently fallen on deaf ears.
Quite out of the blue, so to speak, and on the campaign trail on Maryland’s Lower Shore, where the poultry industry dominates the agricultural economy, Gov. Martin O’Malley told a gathering of poultry growers that his office might be able to correct the situation.
“We’ve got to find a law clinic that takes farmer cases,” he said. “If one university is going to take the Waterkeeper case pro bono, another university needs to take the farmer’s side.”
It might not take “another university.”
A suggestion, Governor. Simply suggest — strongly, with the power of your office — that another group of students at the University of Maryland law school be assigned to Perdue and particularly to Alan and Kristin Hudson, the co-defendants in the Waterkeeper legal action.
It would seem to us that the lawyers of tomorrow should be as schooled as lawyers for the defense as they are as lawyers for the prosecution.
And by the way, Governor, good show.