“I’ve been very busy, no question,” says Paul Suttell. Rhode Island’s chief justice of the Supreme Court has been on the job for four months.

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The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — Paul Suttell likes to listen to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. He’s a history buff and has a membership at the Sakonnet Golf Club in Little Compton.

But since being sworn in as the 51st chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court in July, he’s had little time to engage in leisure activities. He hasn’t read one book — outside of the volumes of legal cases that he needs to consult in crafting his judicial opinions.

And while he and his wife, Mary, have enjoyed a few nights out catching musical acts at Fall River’s Narrows Center for the Arts, he says he made it to the golf course just five times over the summer. “They were very expensive rounds.”

Like his predecessor, Frank J. Williams, Suttell is finding that being the head of a state judiciary that disposes of more than 200,000 cases a year is an all-consuming job. And it’s been all the more challenging, he says, because of the state’s precarious finances.

The courts employ close to 700 people, but there are more than 40 vacancies in the judiciary overall. And the courts received about $6 million less than they asked for in the original budget the judiciary submitted for this fiscal year.

Clerks that formerly worked at the counters serving the public and filing documents have been transferred to courtrooms where newly appointed judges now sit. It is taking longer for documents that the courts still collect in paper form to make their way into case files — sometimes a week or more. And, as the population that uses the state’s six court systems has become more diverse, there is no money in the current operating budget to add more interpreters.

Suttell called his new job “daunting.”

“I’ve been very busy, no question,” he said. “I still have a day job, and I’m trying to find time for that. Reading the briefs and the judicial aspect of it, the opinion writing, I find that I’m doing it on weekends and evenings predominately. The administration is taking up most of the daytime, at least a large part of it … The budget problems we’ve been facing, it’s been difficult. I don’t see that changing much either.”

Suttell, who is 60, wasn’t given much time to learn the ropes in his new administrative position. His first week on the job, the governor handed him a proposal to shut down state government, which would have included, perhaps, closing the court system for a number of days. It was something Suttell — who heads an independent branch of government — balked at. After talking with the heads of three unions — Suttell engaged in discussions with one union head, while his top administrator spoke with the others — the courts agreed to the same furlough system that other state workers signed onto, averting what Suttell calls “a potential crisis.”

SUTTELL HAS TWO JOBS as chief justice. Named to the high court in 2003, he hears appeals from the lower courts, presides over conferences where he and his associate justices discuss the appeals and also carries a full load when it comes time to write decisions.

The new part of his job is administrative. Over the last four months, he says, he has spent much of his workday going over the judiciary’s budget — cash flow and revenue — and deciding how, in tight fiscal times, he can make the court system work more efficiently. He’s developed a wish-list, as well as a list of more immediate priorities.

In an effort to better relations with lower court judges — some of whom felt estranged from Williams — Suttell has held meetings with them and will continue to do so on a regular basis, he says. He’s toured all the state’s courthouses to get a firsthand view of the judiciary’s facilities. He’s decided that if construction money becomes available, it would best be spent building five new courtrooms in the Kent County Courthouse in Warwick to alleviate overcrowding at the Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence and the McGrath Judicial Complex in South Kingstown.

There are no plans, he says, to revisit a proposal backed by Williams to build a courthouse in the Blackstone Valley.

And he says there are no plans to refurbish the chambers he’s inherited from Williams. The chief justice’s chambers now have a dressed-down look. The busts of Abraham Lincoln owned by Williams are gone as are some of the big bookcases. Suttell decided, when choosing what to hang on the walls, to include a poster of Springsteen and one of Babe Ruth (though he’s quick to point out that he’s a Red Sox fan and also a “loyal fan” of the Chicago Cubs, a holdover from his days as a student at Northwestern University).

SUTTELL CANDIDLY ADMITS that “I’m a dinosaur when it comes to technology.” The laptop computer he uses is at least a decade old, one that was given to him, he says, when he sat on the Family Court. He still edits decisions his law clerks draft in longhand.

But he says that his biggest priority for the courts statewide — is to institute an electronic filing system for both civil and criminal cases. He’d hoped this could be accomplished within a couple of years but, now, because of the bad economy, it’s “probably been pushed off a year or two.”

Suttell estimates that by 2014 lawyers will be able to file documents for all state courts electronically — as is now mandated in the federal court system. This will make public access easier and could be another source of revenue for the cash-strapped judiciary if user fees are charged.

Suttell says that in the immediate future, he wants to provide more written information to help pro-se litigants — people who represent themselves in court — maneuver through the court system. More and more people are representing themselves because they can’t afford attorneys, says Suttell, and many don’t know the first thing about the way the court system works.

Another big priority, he says, is to cut the costs of indigent defense. The Supreme Court administers a fund that pays private attorneys for representing poor criminal defendants who cannot be taken on by the public defender. The cost of running this program has spiked from $1.5 million to almost $3.5 million over the past several years. Suttell says he recently signed an order that requires attorneys who are paid from this fund to submit their bills within 30 days of providing services. He wonders whether there could be cost-savings if the courts were to put this work out to bid and plans to appoint a study group to look at the issue.

Suttell said he expects Williams, who continued to sit on the court after retiring as chief justice, to wrap up the work he is doing on pending appeals by year’s end. He says he hasn’t given much thought to what the court will do with the chambers that Williams now uses — a workspace the former chief justice decided to refurbish at a cost of nearly $43,000 after stepping down last December.

Until a new associate justice is sworn in, the Supreme Court is hearing cases with just four justices. That means even more opinions for Suttell to write — since, for the time being, the work of five justices is now being done by four.

BY THE NUMBERS

R.I. judiciary and its budget

$96 million

Current operating budget$83.9 million

Amount of state revenue in operating budget2.8%

Judiciary’s share of general revenue funds729

Authorized full-time positions687

Current employees85.6

Judges and magistrates (includes 4 vacant judgeships and a Family Court magistrate who works two-thirds of the week)6

Courts 81

Courtrooms204,306

Cases disposed in 2008412

Cases pending before the R.I. Supreme Court 273

Cases decided by the R.I. Supreme Court in 2008 (includes cases resolved without a written decision) $28 million

Fines, fees and court costs collected and returned to the General Treasury in 2008

Source: The Administrative Office of State Courts and State Budget Officer Rosemary Booth Gallogly

tbreton@projo.com