To settle a lawsuit, New York has agreed to pay almost double the current rates for indigent defense lawyers in New York.

Under the settlement, the assigned counsel will be paid $75 an hour for work on felony cases and $60 an hour for work on misdemeanor criminal cases, as of Jan. 1. It would be the first increase in the rates since 1985. The settlement came one day before an appellate court was scheduled to hear arguments in the case.

A series of articles in The New York Times in 2001 reported that 38 years after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigent defendants had a right to legal counsel, the representation given to the poor routinely fell short of even the minimal standards recommended by legal experts.

New York City in particular relies on private lawyers to represent the poor more than most big cities, because it lacks a public defender's office. The Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit organization, was supposed to function like a public defender's office, representing nearly all indigent defendants. But Legal Aid was weakened after a dispute with former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and it represents only about half of the hundreds of thousands of people arrested each year.

Both sides seem pleased with the rate hike.

Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein, chairwoman of the judiciary committee, praised the lawyers association for bringing the lawsuit, which she said documented "what many of us long argued, that the inadequacy of the assigned counsel rates resulted in New York's failure to meet our constitutional and statutory obligation."