A federal magistrate judge maintained Friday that James “Whitey” Bulger will go to trial in March, in spite of pleas by a lawyer for the notorious gangster that he cannot be reasonably prepared by then.

J.W. Carney Jr. said it would take him until May to finish reading the hundreds of thousands of documents in the case, but he received little sympathy from US Magistrate Judge ­Marianne Bowler, who said the case will go to trial as scheduled.