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.
The hiring and firing of attorneys (or their reaction to being fired) is its own field of law. Collection of legal fees and arguments over whether the client got good value for the monies paid is a constant meme in legal malpractice.
Good cause for termination is not the same as malpractice. Attorney malpractice, the…
In this medical malpractice case (first cousin to legal malpractice) Judge Lobis of Supreme Court, New York County discusses how a seemingly good defendant’s Motion for Summary judgment fails and why battling about the Note of Issue was a waste of everyone’s time.
DeSantis v Zito ; 2011 NY Slip Op 31059(U) ; April 24…
Justice Judith Gische of Supreme Court, New York County presents a primer on attorney fee litigation and the disposition of counterclaims for legal malpractice in Hurley v. Bulah Church of God in Christ Jesus, Inc. In this case the Church had gone through some hard times. A pastor was accused of financial wrongdoing, and…
ENGLAND and MIDWEST GEMS, INC., -against- . FELDMAN and FELDMAN LAW GROUP, Defendants.11 Civ. 1396 (CM) UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK; 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36382; March 28, 2011, is as good a primer in the general and substantive laws of legal malpractice as one might read. …
Here’s a fairly simple case. Plaintiff signs a real estate contract with a mortgage contingency. If she cannot obtain a mortgage she must give notice. If she properly gives notice she gets her down payment back. She hires attorney who negligently fails to give notice. She does not get her down payment back. Legal malpractice?…
One really can’t tell from the decision, but this appears to be a personal injury – motor vehicle case in NYC with a blown statute. The decision in Greene v Sager 2011 NY Slip Op 50688(U) Decided on April 19, 2011 Supreme Court, Kings County Rivera, J. sets forth the various standards for a summary…
We think there is. It’s hiding inAccess Point Med., LLC v Mandell ;2011 NY Slip Op 30866(U)
April 8, 2011 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 102082/2010
Here is how it goes. Generally in legal malpractice or in breach of fiduciary duty the statute of limitations begins to run on the date…
We think that plaintiffs should have been on notice when they were asked to do business with Bill Kidd, but even his name was not a tip-off. Here’s what happened. Kidd invested $5 million to start a low-cost durable medical equipment business that was dependent on getting cheep materials from China. He hired Troutman and…
How does one prove that the settlement was not good enough, given the circumstances? How does one prove that had this or that taken place, that Husband would have paid less, and more to the point, how does one prove that Husband was the victim rather than the beneficiary of the settlement? It’s all in the…
Win Hay LLC v Chin ; 2011 NY Slip Op 02801 ; Decided on April 7, 2011 ; Appellate Division, First Department is an example of the most informal type of arrangement between an attorney and a client. Client paid the attorney, who "forwarded" the fees to another attorney. This informal type of relationship is unusual…
