In an MDL or coordinated mass tort, a small group of appointed lawyers — lead counsel and the steering committee — do work that benefits every plaintiff in the litigation: coordinating discovery, developing expert testimony, briefing common legal issues, and negotiating global settlement structures. Individual plaintiffs' attorneys who did not do that work still benefit from it when their own cases resolve.

To compensate for this, courts commonly order a common benefit assessment — a percentage holdback from every individual settlement or judgment in the MDL — that funds a common benefit fee and expense pool distributed to leadership counsel based on time and contribution records, typically reviewed by a special master or fee committee.

Juricratic tracks the common benefit assessment as a real deduction from a plaintiff's net recovery in mass tort simulations, distinct from the individual attorney's own contingency fee, since both deductions apply to the same gross settlement figure and materially change the plaintiff-side net-recovery dial.

MDL leadership petitions the court for a common benefit fee schedule early in the litigation so individual plaintiffs' attorneys and their clients understand the holdback in advance, and courts typically review time and expense submissions from leadership counsel closely before approving the final fund distribution.