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.
We’re proud and pleased that the New York Law Journal published "Statute of Limitations in Legal Malpractice" today. From the article:
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The statute of limitations sets the maximum time during which an action for damages may be commenced. It is of ancient heritage. Its first appearance in Anglo-American law is as early as 1237.
Here is a textbook example of how the statute of limitations in legal malpractice is stretched to the extreme, yet plaintiff loses. In 2003 defendants wrote an opinion letter which was contrary to the IRS determination which came in 2007. Attorneys (or related attorneys) were retained in 2007 to fight the IRS and lost in…
A win at trial and a loss on Appeal in this legal malpractice case was based upon Plaintiff’s potential comparative fault. Hattem v Smith 2013 NY Slip Op 07791 Decided on November 21, 2013 Appellate Division, Third Department is the story of a fairly straight-forward sale of a business coupled with the failure to file…
OK, say you’re a law firm, and the client is a Board of Managers, and the President is an Attorney. You do work for them, and things don’t go well. You can blame the "micro-managing" President/Attorney, no?
Well, in Board of Mgrs. of Bridge Tower Place Condominium v Starr Assoc. LLP 2013 NY Slip…
Settlements including pleas to criminal charges are the linchpin of an orderly system of justice. As any prosecutor, and indeed, any litigator knows, only a very small portion of cases can be tried to a fact finder. if 95% of all civil cases, and a similar amount of criminal cases were not subject to disposition…
Plaintiff hires law firm to handle labor law case, Defendant is then hired to handle the appeal from dismissal of the case. The appeal was dismissed for want of prosecution in 2006. The law firm did not tell the client, and in 2008 wrote a letter telling him that the judgment was affirmed. The legal…
In a professional malpractice case, be it legal malpractice or accounting malpractice, plaintiff must be able to show proximate cause. Might a firm be liable for damages based upon issues that arose before its retention? It might be, but in Cannonball Fund, Ltd. v Marcum & Kliegman, LLP
2013 NY Slip Op 32891(U) November 14…
We believe that legal malpractice cases are more harshly reviewed, and held up to a higher standard, almost always in the "but for" portion of the case. Engelke v Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP 2013 NY Slip Op 07419 Decided on November 12, 2013 Appellate Division, First Department is no exception. Plaintiff can demonstrate…
We’ve always thought that a retainer agreement between an attorney and a client had some meaning, real meaning. Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, LLP v Rose 2013 NY Slip Op 07428 Decided on November 12, 2013 Appellate Division, First Department disabuses us of that notion, and has two other interesting things about it. It’s…
People question whether "they" like us? Do "they" treat us fairly? We wonder whether legal malpractice is treated differently than all other law suits? Fielding v Kupferman, 2013 NY Slip Op 02008 Appellate Division, First Department raises the question once again. Compare this case to a garden or varietal slip and fall. Example: plaintiff trips…
