Maine’s state motto, “Dirigo,” is a proud Latin term that means “I lead.” But in at least one controversial statistic, many of the state’s legal minds object to Maine’s trailblazing ways.

Maine pays judges less than almost every other state does, according to new statistics from the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit organization that tracks judicial information.

In hard numbers, Maine ranked 47th in the United States in 2010, paying its state judges about $112,000 per year. When adjusted for cost of living, Maine falls to 50th, leading only Hawaii in terms of judicial pay. (The District of Columbia is included in the center’s rankings).

No one argues that $112,000 isn’t a lot of money; but when partners in private law firms can make several times that amount, it could deter the best legal minds from applying for judgeships in Maine, experts said. Ultimately, that could affect the quality of Maine’s judicial system.

“I’m not going to say we’ve reached that point,” said former Maine Superior Court Justice Robert Crowley, who now works in private practice. “It’s very difficult to tell where that friction point is, but we may not be far from it.

“It’s often not until years after the fact that you see the impact these kinds of things can have on the system.”

Last August, Crowley stepped down from the bench to re-enter the private sector, taking a job at Kelly, Remmel and Zimmerman in Portland. Crowley, 65, said he did it partly for financial reasons and partly because he wanted to take on a new challenge while still in good health.

Although he didn’t leave solely for financial reasons, Maine’s relatively low judicial pay is clearly a problem, Crowley said.

“In the private sector, I see people who I think would make good judges,” he said. “Sometimes I tell the good ones, ‘You ought to consider appointment to the bench.’ They say, ‘What a wonderful opportunity, but it doesn’t make financial sense to do so. … I have to think about my family.'”

Not everyone thinks higher judicial pay is a good idea. Eric A. Posner, a University of Chicago law professor, argued in a 2009 Duke Law Journal article written with two other professors that there was no evidence that better-paid judges have done a better job.

The Maine Legislature has not acted on several recommendations from the judiciary over the past four years to increase judicial salaries.

State Sen. Dave Hastings, R-Fryeburg, and Rep. Charles Priest, D-Brunswick, both on the Judiciary Committee, said the economic tumult of the past few years has made it difficult to approve judicial raises.

“It’s a very difficult situation to tell state employees whose salaries are frozen for their third and fourth years that you’re considering giving a raise to someone else,” Priest said.

The committee’s top priority has been getting clerk positions re-staffed, not judicial raises, both lawmakers said; but they also conceded it’s an issue the state must tackle.

Like Crowley, Mary Ann Lynch said improving judicial salaries is about attracting the best minds to the state’s benches.

“Maine judges’ salaries have fallen far below salaries for professors and others in state government,” said Lynch, the director of court information for the Maine Judicial Branch, in an email. “Judges make critically important decisions affecting people’s lives, their liberty and their property. Compensation needs to be adequate to attract and retain the best from the legal profession.”

In terms of hard salaries, only New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota and Mississippi pay their judges less than Maine does.

However, Maine drops to next-to-last when the salaries are adjusted for cost of living, using a state-by-state analysis of the average cost of goods and services developed by the Council for Community and Economic Research.

Experts said partners at Maine’s top law firms can earn more than $400,000 a year. The consensus in the profession is that someone qualified to be a judge also could make partner at most firms.

Priest said there’s an expectation that people take public-service jobs for the love of their state, not financial gain. Still, he said, the state can’t ask judges to take too much of a pay cut, or it could drive away the best candidates.

Nationally, the salaries of state judges rose 34 percent in the decade ending in 2005. During the same period, the median partners’ share of profits at large law firms jumped 141 percent, according to a recent The New York Times article. Maine judges haven’t had a pay raise since 2007.

Both Hastings and Priest said despite the salary situation, Maine has been “very lucky” that good legal minds have applied for state judgeships. Those include District Court, Superior Court and Supreme Judicial Court positions.

“It’s the good fortune of the state, in spite of these lowly salaries, how well we’ve done,” Hastings said. “A time may come though when that’s not always the case. Yes, there’s always that fear.”