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Anthropic Copyright Settlement Lawyers Cut Fee Request to $187.5 Million

By  |  March 22, 2026

Lawyers for authors and publishers pursuing final approval of a $1.5 billion copyright settlement with Anthropic have sharply reduced their request for legal fees, according to Reuters. In a filing submitted Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, the two court-appointed lead firms, Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser, asked for 12.5% of the settlement fund, or $187.5 million.

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    The revised request marks a substantial drop from the $300 million in fees the firms had originally sought, per Reuters. That earlier proposal included $75 million earmarked for three additional firms — Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, Edelson, and Oppenheim + Zebrak — even though those firms were not formally appointed to represent the full class.

    In the new filing, Susman and Lieff Cabraser told the court that the $187.5 million request is tied only to work performed by class counsel, according to Reuters. The firms said they were no longer contesting the court’s resistance to awarding fees to lawyers who were not officially designated as class counsel.

    The fee dispute emerged after Anthropic and two judges involved in the case raised concerns that the original request was too large. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who had granted preliminary approval to the settlement before taking inactive status at the end of December, objected in a Dec. 23 memorandum to the proposed sharing of fees with the three outside firms. He wrote that class counsel could not “appoint someone else” to share responsibility for the class.

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    Related: Trump Administration Defends Pentagon Blacklisting of AI Firm Anthropic in Court Filing

    Susman and Lieff Cabraser nevertheless said in Thursday’s filing that the Cowan, Edelson and Oppenheim firms had made important contributions that materially benefited the class, according to Reuters. Jay Edelson of Edelson said in an email to Reuters that he was “incredibly proud to have led the negotiations” and of the efforts his firm and Oppenheim + Zebrak devoted to trial preparation.

    Anthropic agreed to the settlement in August to resolve allegations that it used hundreds of thousands of pirated books to train its artificial intelligence systems, according to Reuters. As part of the agreement, the company also committed to destroy pirated datasets and certify that those works were not used in its commercial AI models, including Claude.

    The attorneys leading the case have described the deal as the largest reported copyright class action settlement on record, per Reuters. The settlement would provide class members with more than $3,000 for each copyrighted work covered by the case.

    Final approval of the settlement is scheduled to be considered by U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin at a hearing on April 23 in San Francisco, according to Reuters. Martinez-Olguin inherited the matter after Alsup stepped aside.

    Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the revised fee request or how the three other firms might ultimately be compensated, according to Reuters. Cowan DeBaets, which appeared on the original complaint, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, per Reuters.

    Source: Reuters