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.
Matrimonial legal malpractice has two distinct sides. In representing the monied spouse, it generally consists of a claim that the attorney overbilled, and churned the file. In representing the non-monied spouse, it generally consists of a claim that the settlement was unfair, or that the attorney failed to discover a large cache of assets.
In…
The beginning and end of an attorney-client relationship have some formal aspects to them. They are guided and controlled by CPLR 321. The end of the attorney-client relationship has a direct link to the question of commencement of the statute of limitations. Defendant attorneys in legal malpractice cases often point to harsh communications which precede…
We are not sure where the line between privacy and whistleblowing exists, nor where the balance should be. Galloway v Wittels 2014 NY Slip Op 30006(U) January 6, 2014 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 151287/2013 Judge: Cynthia S. Kern is an interesting example of how a person can become enmeshed in a situation much…
We have noted over the years that trial courts are all too eager to dismiss legal malpractice claims. We argue that trial courts delve way to far into the underlying transaction (or litiigation) in order to determine at the pre-answer stage, whether there is a "but for" component.
The same issue is present in Endless …
Continuing from yesterday’s blog post, we look at another appellate legal malpractice case. In Aramarine Brokerage, Inc. v Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden & Nelson, P.C. 2012 NY Slip Op 03533 Appellate Division, First Department the question of whether appellate counsel’s failure to argue that District Court allowed an impermissible argument raised only in…
We have mused that legal malpractice litigation is often created by financial pressures. Either the attorney has too many cases, or the law firm is understaffed, or the client is unwilling to pay/was overbilled. or, as discussed by Thomas Newman and Steven Ahmuty in today’s New York Law Journal, the attorney is aware of…
Attorneys are subject to a triumvirate of claims, which may generally be: legal malpractice in tort, legal malpractice in contract and breach of fiduciary duty. Attorneys are fiduciaries of their clients, but interestingly, accountants (even CPAs) are not. In Knockout Vending Worldwide, LLC v Grodsky Caporrino & Kaufman CPA’s, P.C. 2012 NY Slip Op…
We reported theRed Zone v. Cadwalader summary judgment news back in September. Today, the case is complete, andthe Judge awarded $ 16.7 million to plaintiff Red Zone for Cadwalader’s failure to carry out its instructions to ensure a letter agreement between Red Zone and UBS Securities LLC which itself memorialized an oral agreement…
In this legal malpractice case, defendant made motions in a seemingly out-of-order fashion, yet succeeded even though. Here is the AD discussing a novel method of moving to dismiss in Shirzadnia v Lecci 2012 NY Slip Op 09043 Appellate Division, Second Department:
"The plaintiff commenced the instant action by the filing of a summons…
It’s called lateral movement. The New York Law Journal is constantly talking about how mid-level laterals are being sought, or how they are finding difficulty in moving from one firm to another. Attorneys are constantly in motion, moving from one firm to another. Because movement is usually a business decision attorneys take care to bring cases…
