PORTLAND – The chief justice says the governor will have a hard time replacing Justice Howard Dana when he retires from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court next month at the close of his second seven-year term.

“We are waiting patiently for the governor to nominate a candidate to fill these huge shoes,” Chief Justice Leigh Saufley, told lawmakers Tuesday during her State of the Judiciary speech to the Legislature.

Saufley praised Dana, who was first appointed by Gov. John McKernan in 1993, and who is the second-longest-serving justice on the seven-member court, after Robert Clifford.

“The state of Maine owes Justice Dana a deep debt of gratitude for his service on the Supreme Judicial Court and his 26 years as an attorney,” Baldacci said in a statement. “Throughout his tenure, Justice Dana has shown himself to be fair-minded and even-handed in the pursuit of justice.”

Known as a “careful” and “thoughtful” judge whose written opinions touched on issues ranging from freedom of speech to tax policy, he may be best remembered for his advocacy for access to legal assistance for the poor.

Dana, who will leave the court March 2, said he plans to spend five weeks in Sri Lanka visiting one of his sons and his family. He said he will decide what else he’d like to do when he returns.

A graduate of Bowdoin College and Cornell University Law School, Dana was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Edward Gignoux and served in private practice in Portland, specializing in complex corporate litigation.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointed him to the board of directors of the Legal Service Corp.

In 1994, when federal funding was denied to organizations such as Pine Tree Legal Services unless they stopped engaging in class-action lawsuits and lobbying on behalf of clients, Dana helped line up funding for Maine Equal Justice Partners, an alternative organization that could continue that work.

As chairman of the American Bar Association task force on access to civil justice, Dana recently proposed extending the right to publicly funded legal assistance to any low-income person engaged in civil matters “where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody.”

Shortly after joining the court, Dana became a focus of controversy through his selection of Harvey Prager, a former drug smuggler, as a law clerk. Dana later said it was mistake to give Prager the job so soon after he completed his sentence.