Venue is the "where" of legal malpractice’s five W’s.  Venue is determined by who is bringing the action, what the cause of action consists of,  How is venue determined.  In NY jurisprudence the short answer for most cases is where one of the parties resides.  Some times it is where the wrong was committed.  Here in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory v. Ropes & Gray we see US District Judge Spatt deciding where to hold the trial.  In a NYLJ article Joel Stashenko writes:

"Eastern District Judge Arthur D. Spatt said in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory v. Ropes & Gray, 20-cv-661, that venue has generally been determined in such malpractice actions based on where an attorney’s improper conduct allegedly occurred, not where the injured parties were located at the time.

Judge Spatt noted that Mr. Vincent appears to have drafted the Hannon applications with material copied from the Fire application while working in Ropes & Gray’s Boston office; that he made assurances to Mr. Hannon and the Cold Spring lab by phone or e-mail from Boston that he was watching out for Mr. Hannon’s best interests, and that he failed repeatedly to tell the lab that he had copied the Fire material in the applications.

Mr. Vincent did meet with lab personnel on several occasions in Long Island early in the patent application process, but the judge said that discussions at those sessions did not directly relate to the alleged malpractice.

"Because the Defendants did not commit any of the alleged acts or omissions underlying the legal malpractice claim in the Eastern District of New York, and any relevant communications were tangential to the legal malpractice claim, venue is not proper in the Eastern District of New York," Judge Spatt wrote.

Ropes & Gray had sought to transfer the case to Boston, where its main offices are located."

In 2009, the firm fired Mr. Vincent after it discovered that a patent database company that billed the firm and clients for more than $730,000 was owned by Mr. Vincent.

The attorney was a specialist in patent law and intellectual property at Ropes & Gray and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s chief outside patent prosecution counsel from 2001 to 2008. According to the lab’s complaint, he was paid $1.82 million in legal fees over that period.
 

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Andrew Lavoott Bluestone

Andrew Lavoott Bluestone has been an attorney for 40 years, with a career that spans criminal prosecution, civil litigation and appellate litigation. Mr. Bluestone became an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County in 1978, entered private practice in 1984 and in 1989 opened…

Andrew Lavoott Bluestone has been an attorney for 40 years, with a career that spans criminal prosecution, civil litigation and appellate litigation. Mr. Bluestone became an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County in 1978, entered private practice in 1984 and in 1989 opened his private law office and took his first legal malpractice case.

Since 1989, Bluestone has become a leader in the New York Plaintiff’s Legal Malpractice bar, handling a wide array of plaintiff’s legal malpractice cases arising from catastrophic personal injury, contracts, patents, commercial litigation, securities, matrimonial and custody issues, medical malpractice, insurance, product liability, real estate, landlord-tenant, foreclosures and has defended attorneys in a limited number of legal malpractice cases.

Bluestone also took an academic role in field, publishing the New York Attorney Malpractice Report from 2002-2004.  He started the “New York Attorney Malpractice Blog” in 2004, where he has published more than 4500 entries.

Mr. Bluestone has written 38 scholarly peer-reviewed articles concerning legal malpractice, many in the Outside Counsel column of the New York Law Journal. He has appeared as an Expert witness in multiple legal malpractice litigations.

Mr. Bluestone is an adjunct professor of law at St. John’s University College of Law, teaching Legal Malpractice.  Mr. Bluestone has argued legal malpractice cases in the Second Circuit, in the New York State Court of Appeals, each of the four New York Appellate Divisions, in all four of  the U.S. District Courts of New York and in Supreme Courts all over the state.  He has also been admitted pro haec vice in the states of Connecticut, New Jersey and Florida and was formally admitted to the US District Court of Connecticut and to its Bankruptcy Court all for legal malpractice matters. He has been retained by U.S. Trustees in legal malpractice cases from Bankruptcy Courts, and has represented municipalities, insurance companies, hedge funds, communications companies and international manufacturing firms. Mr. Bluestone regularly lectures in CLEs on legal malpractice.

Based upon his professional experience Bluestone was named a Diplomate and was Board Certified by the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys in 2008 in Legal Malpractice. He remains Board Certified.  He was admitted to The Best Lawyers in America from 2012-2019.  He has been featured in Who’s Who in Law since 1993.

In the last years, Mr. Bluestone has been featured for two particularly noteworthy legal malpractice cases.  The first was a settlement of an $11.9 million dollar default legal malpractice case of Yeo v. Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman which was reported in the NYLJ on August 15, 2016. Most recently, Mr. Bluestone obtained a rare plaintiff’s verdict in a legal malpractice case on behalf of the City of White Plains v. Joseph Maria, reported in the NYLJ on February 14, 2017. It was the sole legal malpractice jury verdict in the State of New York for 2017.

Bluestone has been at the forefront of the development of legal malpractice principles and has contributed case law decisions, writing and lecturing which have been recognized by his peers.  He is regularly mentioned in academic writing, and his past cases are often cited in current legal malpractice decisions. He is recognized for his ample writings on Judiciary Law § 487, a 850 year old statute deriving from England which relates to attorney deceit.