A recent The American Lawyer story, “With Record Settlement Under Fire, Lawyers in Credit Card Case Ask for $720 Million in Fees,” quoted NALFA as the expert source for statistics on the nation’s largest class action attorney fee awards.  The story centered on the $720 million attorney fee request in the $7.25 billion settlement in the MDL, In re Payment Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation.  The story (which requires NLJ premium access) said:

Setting aside the fees generated by the $206 billion tobacco industry settlement in 1998, a $720 million fee award would be the largest ever in a class action. By way of comparison, Enron's landmark $7.2 billion deal with investors netted plaintiffs lawyers $688 million in fees. A $3 billion settlement that Visa and MasterCard reached over debit card fees in 2003--then the largest-ever antitrust class action settlement--produced a $220 million fee award. Judge Gleeson also oversaw that case. (The National Association of Legal Fee Analysis (NALFA) has a handy chart detailing top class action fee awards.)

The story went on to say:

Terry Jesse, the executive director of NALFA, told us that Friday's fee request may be a reasonable one, given the costs that came with the interchange fee litigation. "Antitrust cases are very complex and require tremendous work," he said.