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.
Weinberg v Sultan 2015 NY Slip Op 30932(U) June 1, 2015 Supreme Court, New York County
Docket Number: 652273/2013 Judge: Cynthia S. Kern is the story of a building owner who let a valuable building on West 46th Street slip out of her hands after 40 years. Is the attorney to blame?
“The following facts…
Gelwan v Youni Gems Corp. 2015 NY Slip Op 30916(U) June 2, 2015 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 653656/2013 Judge: Manuel J. Mendez is an example of how much time and effort attorneys are willing to put into their own fee dispute cases. Here the dispute is over a contingent fee in a…
Many large law firm retainer agreements contain arbitration clauses. It is our guess that the law firms believe that respondent has the better hand in arbitration, that arbitration is costly and not particularly beckoning to Plaintiffs, and that arbitrators will be kinder to the law firm than would a jury. Arbitration clauses are enforceable, and…
Irony is a state of affairs or an event that seems disturbingly contrary to what one expects. Legal malpractice concerns the effects of human error in the litigation of client’s cases. It is highly ironic when mistakes are made in the litigation of legal malpractice cases. Here is one example.
Yuan v Kaplan 2015 NY…
Sometimes a story sounds bad on first reading, and changes thereafter. This story sounds worse on second reading. It reeks of non-actionable wrongs suffered by a not-so-astute plaintiff.
Mizrahi v Adler 2014 NY Slip Op 31701(U) June 30, 2014 Sup Ct, NY County Docket Number: 650802/2010 Judge: O. Peter Sherwood is a retelling of a…
Divorce proceedings lead to a large number of legal malpractice inquiries. They are generally in the nature of “I did not get enough/gave too much in the divorce. Is it legal malpractice? Sometimes it is. In Tanenbaum v Molinoff 2014 NY Slip Op 04186 [118 AD3d 774] June 11, 2014 Appellate Division, Second Department it…
Jeffrey M. Rosenblum, P.C. v Casano 2014 NY Slip Op 51629(U) [45 Misc 3d 1218(A)] Decided on November 19, 2014 District Court Of Nassau County, First District Fairgrieve, J. is an example of what happens when law firms sue to obtain payments. They trigger lots of litigation and almost always. a legal malpractice counterclaim. Here,…
Sometimes a cigar is simply a cigar, and sometimes plaintiffs have to produce wildly expensive trial props. In Melcher v Greenberg Traurig LLP
2015 NY Slip Op 30855(U) May 18, 2015 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 650188/2007 Judge: O. Peter Sherwood a scene not unlike the Pumpkin Papers case unfolded. Here is Judge…
As we started discussing yesterday, Melcher v Greenberg Traurig LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 30855(U) May 18, 2015 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 650188/2007 Judge: O. Peter Sherwood is a historic case. In the Court of Appeals, it was determined that this deceit statute is not really a statute at all; it is…
Melcher v Greenberg Traurig LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 30855(U) May 18, 2015 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 650188/2007 Judge: O. Peter Sherwood is a very (very) important case in the Judiciary Law § 487 world. When the case went to the NY Court of Appeals, it led to the decision that JL…
