A claims process is now underway to administer a multi-million dollar NFL settlement fund to former football players suffering from chronic head injury effects.

According to attorneys involved in the claims process, individual claimants may qualify for payouts of up to $5 million.

Compensation is available to some former players who now suffer from one of a list of specific neurological conditions.

Former players who stand to get the highest dollar amounts are those suffering serious chronic neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gherig’s disease.

Payouts also depend on the claimants’ age and how much time they played in the NFL. Other conditions addressed in the settlement include chronic traumatic encephalopathy and dementia.

U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody granted final approval to the settlement in April 2015, after over four years of litigation in several separate legal actions.

The litigation started in 2011 when 73 former players filed a concussion class action lawsuit against the NFL. Thousands of other players followed with their own individual concussion lawsuits, ultimately bring 5,000 individual players into the fray.

In a nutshell, the players argued that the NFL breached its duty to warn them about the short- and long-term risks associated with repeated concussions and other head trauma. They accused the league of actively concealing information about those risks at the same time it failed to take action to protect players from them.

The federal court system consolidated these claims into a single multidistrict litigation, or MDL, to be processed in Judge Brody’s court in Pennsylvania. The current settlement process addresses all claims raised in that MDL.

The total dollar amount of the NFL settlement is uncapped. Terms of the settlement include a $75 million fund for a Baseline Assessment Program to provide eligible retired players with free neurological assessments.

Counseling and prescription drugs are also available, and the NFL settlement also sets up an educational fund to promote head injury prevention among football players of all ages.

Critics of the settlement argued that it did not address enough different types of diseases, and that it did not address other conceivable classes of plaintiffs such as those who had suffered head injuries but had no residual diagnosable disease.

Some players contended that the NFL settlement should include those with symptoms like irritability, sleep deprivation and memory loss, problems they attribute to their history of playing football.

About 200 players opted out of the NFL settlement entirely.

How to Get Help Making an NFL Settlement Claim

While claimants may not necessarily need legal representation to make a claim, attorneys close to the claims process say that being represented can help ensure claimants get all the payout they may be entitled to.

Missteps in the process could result in claimants getting short-changed or even denied outright, they say.

Attorneys can help claimants maximize their payout by getting them credit for the maximum possible number of NFL seasons, making sure they get a qualifying diagnosis from a physician qualified according to the terms of the NFL settlement, and helping them navigate the complicated paperwork involved in filing a claim.