ne year into his job as Attorney General and Minister of Justice Larry Mussenden is still "thrilled and excited" about his duties.

No wonder. At the age of 41 he has the country's top legal job and can tackle all the problems he experienced first hand in the courtroom as both a Crown and defence lawyer.

He certainly hit the ground running. Within weeks of landing the AG's job he had set up the Justice System Review ? made up of the cream of Bermuda's legal fraternity to suggest improvements.

He has already overseen the repeal of special juries and easier fine payment at Magistrates' Court which is now open at lunchtimes and able to take credit card transactions.

Now Senator Mussenden is working on a Bail Act which will set out which objections can be regarded as legitimate for denying the right to bail and how long people can be kept in custody without charge.

Sen. Mussenden said 72 hours was the current limit but there had been cases where people had been kept in custody for five days.

"That is not appropriate at all."

In a similar vein is a Bermudian version of the UK's Police and Criminal Evidence Act where a custody officer will take charge of a person who has been remanded and determine at what stage they get bailed rather than investigating officers.

He also said people were being locked up awaiting trial for relatively minor offences.

"Those two pieces of legislation are an important re-write of the criminal law."

Also due this year is a tidying up of the law regarding how probation breaches are dealt with after the Criminal Code Amendment Act 2001 made the breach a new offence which has to be investigated by Police.

"We will make it easier to get someone who breaches probation back into court."

Also on the agenda for this year is creating a specialist commercial Supreme Court.

"We have to find the space for that, clearly in a Government building or renting some space."

The Magistrates' Court will soon be given powers to hear civil cases where people are suing people for up to $25,000 which Sen. Mussenden believes will allow more people to settle claims without involving lawyers and will also ease backlogs in the upper court.

Sen. Mussenden, whose first degree was in computer science, is keen to modernise the justice system with high-tech communication.

"We have a very active computerisation project for the Supreme Court to bring it on online by the middle of 2005."

The writ book will be put on the Internet while law firms will be able to file documents electronically.

A project is under way to put the Police, courts, DPP's office, prison service and probation services on the same computer system.

The Attorney General also put his weight behind the idea of electronically tagging offenders released on probation. The idea was mooted in the Justice System Review and could save the country vast sums by allowing offenders to be safely released rather than kept locked up at great expense.

He said sophisticated devices could be used to emit a signal off a cell phone network but he said it was an issue for probation services who are part of the Health Ministry.

"I would be supportive of a system of probation that allows for improved monitoring of people being allowed back out into the community if that involves them wearing a tag as they do in other countries.

"I support certainly doing a pilot project with a view to getting community buy-in."

He hopes one day to bring in all the areas of the legal system under the Ministry of Justice where the should logically be. But said it would take time.

There are signs of progress in the legal system, said Sen. Mussenden, with both Police and prosecutors sharpening up their act.

But better investigative work has led to an increase in cases hitting the courts so a person has been hired to improve efficiency in listing cases.

A lack of defence lawyers can also lead to delays in getting hearing dates so Government now has a former prosecutor handling legal aid work while Sen. Mussenden is pressing for all Bermuda's lawyers to do a stint as defence attorneys, perhaps in their first years.

He said it would ease some of the backlog while giving young lawyers good courtroom experience.

"I know that the law firms will heed that."

He said such service could be a condition for getting a practising certificate.

Delay in getting legal aid bills paid is the bane of many lawyers with some owed tens of thousands of dollars dating back to the middle of last year. One lawyer told that he was owed $70,000 for work done seven months ago.

Sen. Mussenden, who suffered such delay as a defence lawyer, said help was on the way.

"We are in the process of having the legal aid committee transferred into the ministry of justice from the Health and Family services.

"I have already had a few meetings on the delay in payments. That is going to be one of the first areas I hope to address so we have a turn around time of six weeks after a lawyer has submitted a bill."

He said small firms were particularly hard hit as they relied heavily on legal aid payments.

That Sen. Mussenden has not forgotten his roots is unsurprising.

"I am a criminal defence lawyer by profession having started as a prosecutor, if there's one thing I miss about the legal system it's doing jury trials."

He still pops in to watch criminal trials.

"Then I wish I could be standing up doing that. That's what I love. The court room for the high tension, the stress, the excitement and also for the pursuit of justice.

"I really, really enjoyed the defence world. I have an opportunity now to fix a lot of the things in the justice system where I used to be a participant."

Now, he says, with a lot of help from others, from judges right down to the man in the street, he can be the architect of the justice system. Before he leaves the job he is determined to see the new Magistrates' Court/Police station building up and running on Court Street.

"We should be starting some work on that this year."

He is also keen to build a modern Supreme Court on the parking lot behind the Supreme Court Registry in Front Street after noting that Bermuda, with all the legal business associated with a strong international sector, needed facilities to match its status.

He wants to end the practice of accused people being paraded in front of the court buildings which he said made heroes of them.

But it will have to find its way into the Government agenda against competing claims from ministers, said Mr. Mussenden, who says he puts in long hours on the job.

He describes himself as a workaholic. "I am very enthusiastic about the things I do.

"I was in the court room all that time as a litigator so this job is a good fit for me to be constantly working on something I like."