Top Beacon Hill Democrats announced a deal Wednesday to increase the hourly wages of private attorneys who take on legal cases of people who are unable to afford representation, but the new rate is far lower than what some lawyers were pushing lawmakers to approve.

House and Senate budget chiefs Rep. Aaron Michlewitz and Sen. Michael Rodrigues said they hope the $20 an hour wage increase over two years will bring to an end a months-long work stoppage that had resulted in judges either releasing indigent defendants or dismissing their cases.

“With this provision, the Legislature is providing for a significant increase in compensation for private bar counsel and upholding a bedrock principle of our justice system — the right to counsel for the accused,” lawmakers said in a summary of a spending bill that the two branches plan to take up in the coming days.

A group of attorneys who said they were representing more than 500 bar advocates had been pushing for a $35 hourly increase.

— Developing