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.
Bullock v Miller 2016 NY Slip Op 08268 Decided on December 8, 2016 Appellate Division, Third Department is a perfect example of how the “but for” portion of the legal malpractice world works, or alternatively, an example of how court tend to protect attorneys from their own mistakes.
Plaintiff demonstrates at least one statutory shortcoming…
One way to look at how legal malpractice cases come out is by applying Occam’s razor. Which result will more likely be final…now, not later? Optical Communications Groups, Inc. v Rubin, Fiorella & Friedman, LLP 2016 NY Slip Op 08180 Decided on December 6, 2016 Appellate Division, First Department is a fine example. The…
The privity rule in legal malpractice is both a policy and a substantive nightmare for peripheral clients. These include the beneficiary, the individual in a corporate setting and others. The exception permits a law suit when there is fraud, collusion, malice or special circumstances. The exception is rarely invoked, and the “special circumstances” portion even…
Real Estate in New York is always a hot topic. Prices for apartments can reach $3000 per square foot in certain circumstances, and the value of landmarked real property cannot be overstated. What happens when a building project goes badly wrong? Litigation.
143 Bergen St., LLC v Ruderman 2016 NY Slip Op 07936 Decided on…
He was my lawyer, why can’t I sue him? Privity, or the direct contractual relationship between attorney and client is the bedrock of the legal malpractice system. For policy reasons, (we think) this requirement is almost never excused. The policy is most likely that of avoiding a legal malpractice case after each and every litigation. …
As we have discussed in the recent past, the element “that but for the departure of the attorney there would have been a better economic outcome for plaintiff” is a black hole of such magnitude that a vast portion of dismissed legal malpractice cases disappear there. Put another way, while it is simple to show…
A commercial transaction (likely the sale of a business) leads to complications and eventually to a legal malpractice case. What is the status of electronic stored information discovery upstate ? In this Rochester case we see the parties battling over relatively small amounts of money in allocation of discovery costs.
Wade v McConville 2016 NY…
It is a frequent trope in the legal malpractice world that LM claims are made reflexively in order to avoid payment of attorney fees. While that might actually happen, our anecdotal examination finds that most legal malpractice claims are well considered, and are generally meritorious. The same is not necessarily true of Judiciary Law 487…
Attorney fee litigation takes up the larger part of all litigation involving attorneys as parties, and it almost always revolves around hourly billing. There are few cases involving contingent fee cases. Hourly rate billing principles include “account stated” which posits that regularly tendered invoices for services rendered to the client where the client either signed…
The statute of limitations is a strong and almost impermeable defense…when there is adequate proof that the attorney-client relationship actually ended. Here, in Aqua-Trol Corp. v Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, P.A. 2016 NY Slip Op 07916 Decided on November 23, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department the proof was lacking and the case goes on.
“The…
