Would it make more sense to have a government agency handle the litigation for class action lawsuits? I'm thinking of something like anti-trust lawsuits, which

Would it make more sense to have a government agency handle the litigation for class action lawsuits? I'm thinking of something like anti-trust lawsuits, which I believe can be initiated by both state attorneys and private law firms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Remedies_and_enforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Rem... I'm not necessarily advocating for this, because I suspect there are a lot of implications I haven't thought through... however, I'm leaning toward it as an idea. The big problem I see here is that the real victory for a law firm in a very compelling class action is mainly in gaining the right to represent the class. At this point, the risks become asymmetrical, because the payout for the lawyers on a settlement is so high that it makes no sense to engage in even mildly risky behavior, even if the expected return is far higher with litigation. If you and 10 other lawyers are going to get to split 300 million, would you press for litigation that had an 80% chance of returning a billion, and a 20% chance of returning nothing? That lottery would probably be the basis for extracting a good settlement, but it makes sense that lawyers would be extremely reluctant to take that risk, because the outcomes for them are tons of money for sure and probably tons of money but maybe no money. The order of magnitude gets lost in the gain, so only the risk remains as a consideration. Would state prosecutors, who stand to build a career on this but will be paid "the same" regardless of the outcome, do a far worse job?