A Fiduciary Judge's Guide to Awarding Fees in Class Actions

Abstract

It is often said that judges act as fiduciaries for the absent class members in class action litigation. If we take this seriously, how then should judges award fees to the lawyers who represent these class members? The answer is to award fees the same way rational class members would want if they could do it on their own. In this Essay, I draw on economic models and data from the market for legal representation of sophisticated clients to describe what these fee practices should look like. Although more data from sophisticated clients is no doubt needed, what we do know calls into question several fee practices that are in common use today: (1) presuming that class counsel should earn only 25 percent of any recovery, (2) reducing that percentage further if class counsel recovers more than $100 million, and (3) reducing that percentage even further if it exceeds class counsel's lodestar by some multiple.