Fees Ask in Anthropic AI-Copyright Settlement Draws Judge’s Ire

A federal judge chastised attorneys’ request to give additional firms a cut of a $1.5 billion class-action settlement between authors and AI developer Anthropic PBC.

The involvement of three additional law firms who were helping crank out settlement details—and have asked for $75 million from the settlement fund—was “never blessed,” Judge William Alsup wrote in a Tuesday memorandom filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. That sum is part of a total $300 million request for attorneys’ fees filed in early December.

“This memorandum should not be read as merely opposing a multiplier for these three firms,” he wrote. “It should be read as opposing any award at all for these firms, including any award from any fees paid to class counsel.”

Alsup, who is retiring by the end of the year, wrote the memo to “set the record straight” for the judge who will take over the case in January.

Anthropic lambasted the motion for attorneys’ fees last week, saying there is “scant justification or substantiation” for the “extraordinary” fees demanded by non-class counsel from Edelson PC; Oppenheim & Zebrak; and Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP.

Alsup said it’s possible the coordination counsel could share some of their fees with publishers to encourage them not to opt out of the settlement, giving those publishers an unfair gain at a cost to the rest of the class. He ordered all the firms who filed a petition for attorneys’ fees to file declarations revealing any fee-sharing deals and arrangements they’ve made with class members for a “sweeter recovery than other class members.” He also ordered them to preserve all related emails, messages, and written materials for potential future discovery.

Designated counsel for the authors’ class from Susman Godfrey LLP and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP convinced Alsup to preliminarily approve the settlement deal in September. The deal would grant authors and publishers recovery for each work Anthropic was accused of downloading from pirate libraries during its AI training process.

That preliminary approval and class notices confirmed that only Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser were approved to serve the class, Alsup said.

Now, the three additional firms “ask for a bonanza as if they had been class counsel all along,” he wrote. He added that, in his view, the current class counsel could and should have been able to do the work of the coordination counsel on their own.

“A law firm cannot appoint itself class counsel by showing up,” he said. “Nor can class counsel appoint someone else to do its work.”

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 PBC, N.D. Cal., No. 3:24-cv-05417, memorandum filed 12/23/25.