In December 2025, the lawyers behind the $1.5 billion settlement requested $302 million in fees and expenses from the court for their work during the lawsuit against Anthropic for use of copywritten material to train its AI model.

The lawsuit was over the artificial intelligence platform Anthropic’s use of copywritten material. The settlement includes $1.5 billion, about $3,000 for each instance of use. If an author has 3 books that were used by Anthropic, they’d receive $9,000 as an example.

The plaintiff’s lawyers asked a federal judge for $300 million in attorney fees plus expenses of about $1.97 million and $17 million reserve fund for future expenses in December 2025. That’s around 20% of the settlement. There was also a request of $50,000 for each of the three named plaintiffs in the case. $75 million of the $300 million would have gone to three firms, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, Edelson, and Oppenheim + Zebrak, while the rest would have gone to Susman and Lieff Cabraser.

That amount received pushback and was objected to and that request has been lowered.

Law firms Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser asked the federal court in San Francisco to award them 12.5% of the settlement fund, or $187.5 million.

The final approval of the settlement will be considered during an April 23 hearing. A preliminary approval happened in September 2025.