The concept of a class action is to allow a potentially large number of claimants to find restitution without cluttering up courts with an unreasonable number of suits all claiming the same thing.
If 5,000 people are affected by the same thing, say a cancer drug that ends up passing approval but causes blindness, is it a better solution to tie up one court for each person's claim, or one for all the claims?
From your comment, you seem to believe that there are lawyers getting a portion of each claimants settlement, and that's not really how it works. Though, it is how it would work if there were an individual claim made for each affected person.

The idea of a class action suit is what lawsuits are supposed to do: hold violators accountable. They're not supposed to make anyone rich, they're supposed to redress wrongs. Certainly they make some law firms money, but as we live in a world of byzantine legal codes, I don't see a lot of other options. Lawyers are going to get their cut. Class action lawsuits aren't going anywhere unless someone has a better alternative.

..Yeah, how it usually works is that the lawyer will take 95% of the reward money in lawyer fees, right off the top, and the other 5% is divvied up amongst the claimants.

So you end up getting a check for $0.50