AUGUSTA — Maine judges’ pay and benefits should be increased to ensure that both seasoned lawyers from private practice and younger lawyers with backgrounds in government are drawn to the bench, Chief Justice Daniel Wathen said earlier this week.

Joined by other top judges at a hearing before the Judicial Compensation Commission, Wathen noted that judicial pension benefits were rolled back as part of reforms approved in 1984 while judicial salaries remain barely above what a junior associate at a private law firm commands.

“The level of compensation and benefits inevitably affects the composition of the judiciary and the degree of independence that it enjoys,” Wathen told the three-member advisory panel.

The chief justice also renewed the call for the elimination of a $3,200-a-year differential between the salaries of judges in the Superior Court and those in the district and administrative courts.

Associate judges in the district and administrative courts now are paid $77,951, while associate justices on the Superior Court receive $81,199 and those on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court get $85,865, according to court officials. Chief justices at each level receive about $4,000 more.

Judges in Maine are appointed by the governor.

Wathen noted that another study panel recommended several years ago that salaries for trial judges at all levels be equalized. While the different courts handle different kinds of cases, he said all the judges require similar training, knowledge and experience.

“By standing order, every trial judge in Maine is permitted to preside in every trial court in Maine for every type of proceeding. We are one system and judges are routinely cross-assigned from one court to another.”

Maine’s judicial salaries and pensions remain among the lowest in the nation, Wathen said.

To illustrate the apparent effect of compensation on the makeup of the state judiciary, Wathen recalled the situation when he was first appointed to the bench 19 years ago: The average judge was “substantially in excess of 50 years of age” and all but six of the 44 jurists came from private practice.

Today, half of the 50 sitting judges went to the bench directly from other government jobs and their average age is 40, he said.

“In less than 20 years, the pendulum has swung sharply from practitioners approaching retirement to government employees seeking advancement. Both groups are needed, but neither should dominate,” he said.

Wathen traced the trend to changes in judicial compensation that the Legislature approved in 1984, which he said were designed to make judicial service more attractive to younger lawyers who could serve longer on the bench and less desirable to older lawyers approaching retirement.

As a result of those changes, judges must contribute 7.65 percent of their salaries toward their pensions. But the corresponding increases in salary were not enough to offset the pension contribution, he said.

Judges received a cost-of-living increase in 1995, but lawmakers refused to grant even that in the previous three years, officials said.

The commission is scheduled to make recommendations to the Legislature by Dec. 1.