If you’ve been affected by a data breach and you just got a letter, it makes sense to hire a lawyer at that time because you may be the first one to file a lawsuit. If you’re the first one to file a lawsuit in a class action, and you’re the named person who did it, we call that the plaintiff, and you serve as what we call the class representative for the entire class of people who got the letters. If the case resolves through settlement or at trial, most courts will award the person who filed the lawsuit what’s called a service award, which is an amount of money above and beyond what everyone else in the class gets just by being a member of the class.
If you don’t want to serve as a plaintiff in a lawsuit, you can do nothing, and if there’s a settlement at some point, you’ll still get paid out of the settlement, but you’ll only get paid what everyone else will get paid.
