BOSTON (AP) – Ten months after a blue ribbon panel issued a scathing report on the state court system, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall said the state has made substantial progress in improving management of its courts.

“The justices and I are convinced that the challenges of court reform can be met, and will be met,” she said Saturday during her keynote speech to the Massachusetts Bar Association at their annual meeting in Boston.

Marshall outlined three goals for the courts: to find systems for fairly distributing court personnel, processing civil and criminal cases quickly and evaluating courts’ functioning and staff.

She also said that judges were regularly being evaluated, one of the recommendations of the report released last March by an SJC-appointed panel.

“You know, as I know, that the overwhelming majority of our judges are superb,” Marshall told the bar association. “But you also know, as do I, that a few, a small number of our judges do not perform as well. … All of us are tainted by a few.”

The March report found financial, organizational and managerial inequalities, plummeting morale and mass confusion in the judicial system.

It recommended clearer administrative authority, tougher performance goals and tighter budget controls.

Marshall called last year’s report a “masterful blueprint for comprehensive management reform.”

Chief Justice for Administration and Management Robert A. Mulligan was appointed in October to convert the report’s recommendations into actions, and a new Court Management Advisory board will advise judges on “all matters of judicial reform,” she said.

Marshall also pointed out in her speech how technology had streamlined court processes for judges, clerks, lawyers and clients. These include “MassCourts,” a comprehensive case management database for trial courts that combined separate systems, and court Web sites updated daily with appellate case information.

She stressed the need to increase pay for judges, prosecutors and public defenders. Judges’ pay in Massachusetts in 47th in the nation and public defenders’ annual salary is less than half the loans a typical lawyer owes after law school, she said.

She also bemoaned continuing budget cuts that had eliminated 1,200 positions since July 2001.

“The pain of fiscal austerity has taught us to work smarter with less,” she said.

Bar association president Richard C. Van Nostran, who is a Worcester attorney, said funding issues were “the biggest challenge to any trial lawyer in the Commonwealth.”

“Underfunding is what has caused the system to slow down and created the political problem that justice delayed is justice denied,” Van Nostran said.

AP-ES-01-24-04 1723EST