“Court reform is sort of like trying to repair a truck while driving it down the road. If you can’t pull over and stop, and we can’t, you’ve got to keep a sharp eye on the road ahead while you work.” – Daniel E. Wathen, Maine chief justice, 1998 State of the Judiciary speech.

Maine’s court system looks a lot like the state’s road system – frost heaves and potholes take motorists by surprise, wreaking havoc on wheel alignments, suspension systems and tires as well as drivers’ nerves and their pocketbooks.

Leigh I. Saufley’s eyes are focused on that road.

She’s determined not just to fill the holes and smooth out the bumps but to repave the surfaces so the courts operate more smoothly and efficiently.

The chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court today will deliver her fifth State of the Judiciary address to the Legislature. She will cover some familiar ground – the need for security and more funding – and tout innovative initiatives – regionalization, the mental health court in Augusta and video arraignments.

Saufley, 51, is unlikely to weave the words “vision” or “far-sighted” into her speech, but slowly and steadily she is transforming the way the courts conduct day-to-day operations. Building on a foundation laid by former Chief Justice Daniel Wathen and his predecessor Vincent L. McKusick, she is implementing changes that will modernize the courts and make the judicial system more responsive to the needs of the public.

“I will be talking about the progress we’ve made not withstanding the limitation on our resources,” Saufley said Tuesday in a phone interview from her office in the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland. “I’ll also sum up the remaining difficulties we’re facing created by the simple fact that we don’t have enough people.”

She said that she would emphasize three key issues – matters involving children, courthouse safety, and the small claims and civil cases involving business that often get pushed to the judicial back burner.

“Over the past couple of decades the judicial branch has received more and more responsibility from the Legislature … to address matters of personal violence,” Saufley said last year in an hour-long interview.

“That shows up in cases from divorce to parental rights to domestic violence to protection from abuse and even in the number of murder trials. Because of all of these new responsibilities, the judicial branch’s ability to respond has been strained pretty badly.

“We’ve known it’s been hard to keep up,” she continued. “We have heard over the past decade how hard it has been to get things resolved and that [cases] take too long and lives spin out of control. … So my vision, if you want to do the vision thing, is to make the judicial branch in Maine into a system that is able to respond to all the different types of disputes that come up. And, right now, we still are not able to do that.”

A Maine Superior Court justice put it more bluntly.

“She’s leading the charge from the 19th century into the 20th century,” Superior Court Justice Andrew Mead said Tuesday. “We don’t have enough money for technology right now to come into the 21st.”

Implementing the vision

More than three years ago, Saufley charged a Judicial Resource Team, made up of judges, clerks and court administrators, with assessing the workload and judicial resources of the courts and recommending a new model for managing cases and allocating judicial resources.

The report laid out 49 recommendations designed to allow courts to:

. Regionalize operations and caseloads.

. Set up a system to track case completion rates.

. Consolidate the responsibilities of courts within regions.

. Implement new scheduling practices to avoid delays and continuances.

Some of the team’s recommendations have been implemented, including having all felonies originate in Superior Court rather than District Court, the cross-assignment of judges and clerks from one court level to another, and a pilot project for video arraignments. The report’s recommendations on changes in how cases are scheduled are to be implemented April 1.

“In the tradition of justice that existed 15 or 20 years ago,” Saufley said last year, “people brought their disputes into the courthouse. They gave the judge the facts. The judge decided the facts and applied the law.

“Today’s judging requires judges to be more interactive with people who come before the court and more interactive with the community,” she said. “We have to use our resources in a way that allows us to help people.”

Saufley has said that the issues being brought to the courts, from family violence to substance abuse and mental illness, call for “relational judging” and problem-solving courts, such as the drug courts.

The path to the bench

A Maine native, Saufley has called her years growing up in South Portland a model for a Norman Rockwell painting depicting the idyllic American home.

After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Maine “because that’s what was affordable.” She graduated in 1976 with a degree in psychology, and planned to pursue a banking career. Her growing awareness of the plight of children and families in crisis, however, drew her to the law.

She graduated from the University of Maine School of Law in 1980. A year later she went to work in the Maine Attorney General’s Office, where she worked with families in crisis and represented the Department of Human Services. A decade later, she was appointed a District Court judge and, in 1993, was appointed to the Superior Court bench.

That experience makes Saufley the first chief justice to serve on all three levels of Maine’s court system.

As an attorney, Rep. Janet Mills, D-Farmington, appeared before Saufley in District Court and Superior Court.

“She’s very hands-on,” Mills said Monday of Saufley’s judicial style. “She is good at moving the docket, but she’s fair. She knows how to cut through the crap and get to the heart of a case.”

Saufley said last year that she misses the direct contact with people that she had as a judge in the lower courts

“I miss the ability to work with litigants and lawyers to address the problems right there and find solutions to problems in a way that makes people’s lives better,” she said. “I miss working more closely with lawyers. … And, I miss working with juries who are really the citizens who make the entire jury system work.”

Politics of the job

Although judges are expected to be above the political fray, Saufley must report to the Legislature and advocate for the judiciary’s budget. It’s an aspect of the job that she wasn’t fully prepared for when she was elevated from associate justice to chief.

“I have a great deal of respect for the [legislative] process,” she said. “Legislators in Maine have a hugely difficult job to balance all that comes before them. In the end, it comes down to dollars. I have tried very hard in this role to be as businesslike as I possibly can when I deal with the Legislature.”

To that end, she has overseen the creation of an annual report that includes statistics on the budget and caseloads, with colorful bar and pie graphs showing how money is spent. Last year, Saufley also delivered a short version of her speech to a joint session of the Legislature and handed out a more detailed version to lawmakers.

She will do the same today, according to her office.

“My vision also is to continue to help legislators and the public understand how we can best provide justice,” she said, “and to see that we have a good, solid, no-frills system of judicial access.”

Saufley has been a convincing advocate during lean fiscal times, according to Sen. Berry Hobbins, D-Saco, who chairs the Judiciary Committee. She also is politically savvy.

Last year, when a reduction in the proposed budget was being considered, Saufley appeared before Hobbins’ committee to explain the impact it would have on the judiciary. The potential cuts she outlined included the closure of District Court in two committee members’ legislative districts.

“It’s easy to talk the talk,” Hobbins said of Saufley, “but she is willing to walk the walk. She took it beyond the political rhetoric and showed realistically what it meant.

“Once she explained her budget, those who’d proposed cuts were satisfied with it. She had the facts and figures to back up her plan. That was enough to convince us that her budget was lean and there was no extra in it.”

Juggling roles

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has two functions – it applies and interprets the law in cases appealed from the lower courts, and it administers the court system. In addition to those jobs, the chief justice oversees the workers within that system.

“I have three different roles,” Saufley said. “I’m an appellate justice. I’m the CEO of a company with 450 employees, so I deal with all the human resource issues, facility and budget issues that go along with that. And, I’m the leader of a branch of government, so I meet regularly with the governor and legislative leaders.”

Saufley said that the administrative demands of the job take up most of her daytime work hours. She does most of her appellate work, including reading briefs and writing opinions, at home on nights and weekends.

The chief justice also is a daughter, a wife, and the mother of two children in college. Her husband, William Saufley, operates a law firm in Portland.

“So I try to juggle all those roles,” she said. “I don’t even pretend that I find a great balance in life. … I think balance is a word we use. We pretend that we balance, but really, we juggle.”