NRA Seeks Over $200 Million From Ex-Counsel William Brewer in Dallas Arbitration

The NRA filed a seven-page application on October 30, 2026, in Dallas County District Court to compel arbitration against its former lead outside counsel, William A. Brewer III, and his firm, Brewer Attorneys & Counselors, seeking damages in excess of $200 million.

In a statement to Shooting News Weekly, the association said it has commenced arbitration before JAMS in Dallas, Texas, asserting legal malpractice (professional negligence), breach of fiduciary duty, knowing participation in breach of fiduciary duty and negligent misrepresentation. It seeks compensatory and consequential damages, forfeiture and disgorgement of fees paid to the firm with a constructive trust, exemplary damages, interest, costs and attorney’s fees. Arbitration is the forum named in the firm’s representation agreements, and the proceeding itself is private, so the court application is the public record of the dispute.

That application is not posted online. The Dallas Morning News reviewed it and published its contents on November 3. In it, the NRA says it retained the Brewer firm in March 2018 for a “narrow engagement to shepherd the NRA through a single insurance-regulatory inquiry,” and that the work “quickly metastasized over more than six years into a sprawling, nationwide representation that came within a breath of destroying the organization it was retained to defend.”

Brewer and his firm inflicted “catastrophic financial and reputational harm on the organization they were retained to protect” through “negligent, conflicted, and self-interested professional representation,” the filing says. It accuses them of having “actual knowledge of the very executive misconduct that placed the NRA in regulatory peril,” choosing “to conceal and disregard misconduct rather than cure it,” and shielding former chief executive Wayne LaPierre “in order to further protect the firm’s and Brewer’s own interests.”

Five matters are cited. On the firm’s advice in 2019, the NRA ended its contract with its longtime public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen, and sued in two jurisdictions seeking an estimated $100 million, then on the eve of trial Brewer “advised the NRA to pay” about $16 million to settle. The NRA recovered nothing after the firm had billed it nearly $20 million in fees for that litigation alone, the filing says, and it puts the total cost of the Ackerman McQueen fight at $35 million or more. In 2019 as well, the firm advised suing then-president Oliver North, who has since sued the NRA. The filing also says the firm “engineered a secret Chapter 11 bankruptcy” in January 2021 that the federal bankruptcy court dismissed as not filed in good faith, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars in fees and expenses, including more than $5 million paid to the Brewer firm, and that Brewer refused to recommend removing LaPierre.

Most of those matters tie to the New York Attorney General’s enforcement action. Letitia James sued on August 6, 2020, to dissolve the NRA, naming LaPierre, former treasurer Wilson “Woody” Phillips, former chief of staff Joshua Powell and general counsel John Frazer and alleging a loss of more than $64 million in three years. Across those and related matters, the filing says, the Brewer firm charged the NRA nearly $200 million in legal fees, costs and related charges.

Greenberg Traurig partners Michael Gruber and Brian Mason represent the NRA, after representing Ackerman McQueen against it in the earlier litigation. Brewer and his firm had not responded publicly as of November 3, 2026, and the firm’s news page carried no statement. The next step is the firm’s response to the application in Dallas County District Court, and any award would come from a private JAMS panel.