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.

Terms that are often used, often lose their meaning.  What is legal malpractice?  It’s a situation in which  an attorney is retained to represent a client, takes on the case, departs from the standard of good practice for an attorney in similar representations, and where that departure from good practice proximately leads to a bad

Summary judgment in favor of defendant-attorneys is common; summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff-client is rare.  Genesis Merchant Partners, L.P. v Gilbride, Tusa, Last & Spellane, LLC 2017 NY Slip Op 30430(U) February 27, 2017 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 653145/2014 Judge: Nancy M. Bannon is an example of plaintiffs’ case, well-played.

Gersh v Nixon Peabody LLP 2017 NY Slip Op 30363(U)  February 27, 2017
Supreme Court, New York County  Docket Number: 155668/2016  Judge: Carol R. Edmead is an example of the hurdles over which a legal malpractice plaintiff must jump.  Its a complicated but familiar estate planning issue.  Decedent was previously married with children.  Separation agreement

The parties in Kelleher v Adams  2017 NY Slip Op 01542  Decided on March 1, 2017  Appellate Division, Second Department have descended from philosophical discussions of the relationship of privity to contract and are fighting over who is permitted to represent the plaintiffs.  Initially plaintiff’s attorney was disqualified.  That changed on appeal.

“The defendants Jeffrey

Molina v. Faust Goetz Schenker & Blee, (S.D.N.Y. 2017) illustrates the difficulty of assignments of legal malpractice cases.  To be sure, assignment is permitted.  “While legal malpractice claims may be assigned in New York (even to former litigation adversaries), nothing prevents a New York court from applying judicial estoppel to a case where all of