[fiatmoney]

"Strength" is not a metric here. There is a principal-agent problem because the lawyers are able to convince a court to give them the right to represent the class. They then have a much lower standard of responsibility to the class.

You need a solution that aligns the plaintiff's interests and the lawyer's interests - one way to do that is to have them negotiate with the plaintiff rather than the defendant to get paid.

Of course, this puts a greater burden on potential defendants - you'd probably see lower volume of suits and higher damages / penalties. It's unclear how the total would shake out.

[spenrose]

[Edit: I misunderstood fiatmoney.]

Strength is not a metric if your goal is to require moral perfection from those representing workers before placing any burden on law-breaking capitalists -- a not uncommon perspective among those concerned about "fiatmoney". If, on the other hand, your goal is to allow the rare employment market in which workers actually have some power to function as a free market, then you might treat legal principal agent problems as issues to be managed rather than excuses to allow capitalists to break the law with effective impunity.

[fiatmoney]

Who said anything about "moral perfection"? And how is changing the relationship between a lawyer and their putative clients not "treating it as an issue to be managed"? Whatever you do, if you make it more difficult for a lawyer to cash out early (via bullshit "settlements" like this, or the ever popular "here's a coupon for our products" or "here's a donation to the lawyer's friend's charity"), there will be fewer suits brought. That's a good thing on balance if the ones that remain actually have a deterrent effect - currently class-actions are more or less a cost of doing business. Whether that happens is more or less a technocratic problem.

For what it's worth, I hope Devine is successful. It would have been better had there been prosecutions all around with appreciable jail time, but unless a state AG wants to get involved, remitting the full damages and a significant penalty will have to do.