Anthropic Settlement: Attorney Fee Cut Adds $112.5M to Author Pool — Claims Deadline Today

A significant development in the Bartz v. Anthropic class action settlement emerged ahead of today's March 30 claims deadline: plaintiffs' attorneys voluntarily reduced their fee request from $300 million to $187.5 million on March 23, 2026, adding $112.5 million directly to the author and publisher claimant pool. The total settlement fund remains $1.5 billion, covering approximately 500,000 books used without permission to train Anthropic's Claude AI models. Eligible authors are estimated to receive approximately $3,000 per qualifying work, with payments typically split 50/50 between authors and publishers. A final approval hearing is scheduled for April 23, 2026, with distribution calculations expected by June 11, 2026.