Authors’ Lawyers Lower Fees Ask in Anthropic Pact Approval Bid

Authors suing Anthropic PBC over its AI training process asked a federal court for final approval of their proposed class action settlement with the tech firm.

Attorneys for the class would get 12.5% of the $1.5 billion deal, $187.5 million, less than the 20%—$300 million—initially proposed, according to the proposed order filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Each of the named plaintiffs would be awarded $50,000 and the settlement administrator would get $18 million, the order said.

The filing suggests the court should overrule objections to the settlement, including those to the duration of the notice period, expanding the class definition, and forcing the parties to go to trial.

The settlement, which is the largest sum ever in a copyright class action, will pay out more than $3,000 to authors and publishers for each work work Anthropic was accused of illegally downloading from pirate websites. The deal was preliminarily approved in September after facing Judge William Alsup’s ire, who objected to a set-aside of $75 million for additional attorneys who weren’t named class counsel. Alsup has since retired, and Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin is overseeing the case.

Martinez-Olguin said in January that the lawyers outside class counsel were “working for free” and wouldn’t receive a cut from the settlement fund.

Friday’s proposed order doesn’t discuss those lawyers, which earlier filings referred to as coordination counsel.

The authors sued Anthropic in 2024 and reached a settlement agreement roughly a year later, after Alsup said he would advance the case to trial on the matter of downloading pirated books.

Susman Godfrey LLP and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP represent the authors.

Anthropic is represented by Cooley LLP, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, Lex Lumina LLP, and Morrison & Foerster LLP.

The case is Bartz v. Anthropic, N.D. Cal., No. 3:24-cv-05417, proposed order on final approval of class action settlement filed 3/20/26.