content: Lawyers get a bad wrap. Obviously I'm bias, but most of us have a harder time preventing our clients from doing shady things than getting remotely close to doing it ourselves. Picture the army of attorneys Yahoo used to defend these suits, and the amount of work plaintiffs' attorneys put in sifting through the discovery (given and taken). The hours add up, we have a fee arrangement, and the class reps know the costs of the attorneys and the amount of obstacles Yahoo would force them to jump over to get anywhere near the evidence plaintiff would need to resolve this favorable. And picture the class, random letters go out that essential require the class members to do nothing. "Hey, you are a part of this class. If you let us do the work we will add your name." Likely a letter that gets half-read and thrown out. At the end of the day a large corporation's practices change because of the lawyers' work, and most individuals in the class don't care. And like I said, even if you still think that's slimy, that represents very few attorneys.