OK, IANAL, so help me out here. If that's the case, why do plaintiffs get anything at all? Why not just give all the compensation to the lawyers and let those naive plaintiffs go make themselves whole? Why in the heck should the legal system care about people who were damaged in the first place?
Well, it's because the purpose of the courts is to try to make yourself whole. Except in the case of a class action, where it's practically impossible.
You see, a class action lawsuit is designed for instances where the defendant causes damage as a whole, but individually, not so much. Let's say your cellphone carrier overbills you $1 a month. On contract. Over two years, that's an extra $24. Will you go take them to court over it? Even small claims will have a larger filing fee.
Now, let's say the same cell carrier has only 10M customers. Doing this "overbilling" nets them an extra $10M a month, or $120M a year. Really, a decent chunk of money.
Now, some customers will complain, but if you do it every month, you'll wear them down (you can put them on hold for 30 minutes and most people will forget about the $1).
individually, no customer is hurt big, but as a whole, damage was caused. And hell, because it's so profitable, others want in as well - imagine your insurance provider doing the same, your TV provider, your internet provider, etc. etc. etc. All skimming an extra few bucks a month.
And you can get away with a lot before people start to find it's worth it to file a lawsuit.
Now, what kind of compensation do you want? I mean everyone was hurt only a little bit, so the actual "make whole" part is pretty small.
And you're perfectly free to opt out of the class action and bring forth your own suit to be made whole again. Just it's likely to cost you more time and money than it's worth.
What you propose already happens today - you're free to opt out (and you have until they start distributing the awards to do so, so if you think what they give Is lame, you're free to pursue your own lawsuit).