In this article, we study attorney fees awarded in the largest securities class actions: “mega‐settlements.” Consistent with prior work, we find larger fee awards but lower percentages in these cases. We also find that courts are more likely to reject or modify fee requests made in connection with the largest settlements. We conjecture that this scrutiny provides an incentive for law firms to bill more hours, not to advance the case, but to help justify large fee awards—“make work.” The results of our empirical tests are consistent with plaintiffs’ attorneys investing more time in litigation against larger companies, with the largest potential damages, particularly when there are multiple lead counsel firms. We find a similar pattern with relative efficiency, with more hours per docket entry for the largest‐stake cases with multiple lead counsel firms. Overall, our results suggest that plaintiffs’ attorneys are receiving windfall fee awards in at least some mega‐settlement cases at shareholders’ expense.

中文翻译：

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努力工作还是工作？证券欺诈集体诉讼中原告的律师费

在本文中，我们将研究最大的证券集体诉讼中授予的律师费：“巨额和解”。与先前的工作一致，在这些情况下，我们发现收费较高，但百分比较低。我们还发现，法院更有可能拒绝或修改与最大和解相关的费用要求。我们推测，这种审查可以激励律师事务所增加工作时间的计费，而不是提起诉讼，而是帮助证明大笔费用的合理性-“工作”。我们的经验检验结果与原告的律师投入更多时间进行针对较大公司的诉讼相一致，潜在损失最大，尤其是在有多个首席律师事务所的情况下。我们找到了相对有效的相似模式，对于有多家牵头律师事务所的最大宗案件，每个案卷录入时间要更长。总体而言，我们的结果表明，至少在一些超大型和解案件中，原告的律师正在获得意外之财奖励，而这是由股东承担的。