After four years, 36,215 billable attorney hours and 3.2 million pages of legal documents, a closely watched Silicon Valley class-action case is over.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh gave final approval Wednesday to a $415 million settlement between Apple Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., and nearly 65,000 current and former tech workers. Judge Koh also awarded the workers' attorneys only half of what they requested in legal fees, bumping up the amount awarded to the workers by about $700 each.

The workers first sued the tech giants in 2011, alleging that the companies suppressed wages from 2005 to 2009 by conspiring not to hire each other's employees.

Legal filings in the case revealed emails between tech titans such as the late Apple founder Steve Jobs and former Google chief Eric Schmidt, in which they discussed the recruiting of each other's employees. Those emails, including one in which Mr. Jobs responded to news of a Google recruiter's firing with a smiley face, provided popcorn-munching drama in Silicon Valley.

Judge Koh, in San Jose, Calif., kicked back a $324.5 million settlement in August 2014 after one of the named class members denounced it and hired a new attorney. Judge Koh told the two sides to increase the settlement, and in January 2015 gave preliminary approval to the new figure.

In another filing Wednesday, Judge Koh lopped attorney fees in half, awarding $40.8 million instead of the requested total of $85.6 million. The decision followed an odd feud among the workers' attorneys in which one firm accused another of unreliable billing practices.

Judge Koh said that while the thousands of billable hours and millions of pages of legal documents the class counsel went through were significant, the legal fees she awarded were more appropriate. The companies' attorneys went through their own hours and documents, so the totals for both sides of the case were even more. In cutting the fees in half, the judge noted she was raising the average recovery for the 64,410 class members by nearly $700 to roughly $5,770 a person.

Lawyers for both sides in the case didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Daniel Girard, who represented Michael Devine, the class member who protested the initial settlement, said in an email that "we are pleased that the court approved the settlement."

Write to Jeff Elder at jeff.elder@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 03, 2015 13:45 ET (17:45 GMT)

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