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.
Arbitration and legal malpractice form an uneasy fit. One reason is that discovery is limited; another is that the case is decided by a panel of attorneys. While in many ways a panel of "wise men" may be preferable, in legal malpractice plaintiff will generally prefer a jury.
Juries trend towards a less highly technical…
It was always a first year economy class aphorism that hemlines were positively correlated with the state of the economy. Better finances led to brighter prospects, led to more sprightly dresses, with higher hemlines. A downturn in the economy leads to a similar sartorial downturn.
This article from NY Lawyer "As Economy Worsens, More Lawyers Being …
This is the same heading, but relates to a totally different set of circumstances. Is an attorney/law firm united in interest with its former client, when the former client is sued, but the attorney is not? May plaintiff [or a third-party plaintiff] rely upon the relation-back principal in order to bring in the attorneys late…
Legal Malpractice litigation succeed es earlier litigation, by its very definition, and all know that "but for" refers to the first case. An unfortunate corollary to this definitional fact is that clients and some attorneys turn to legal malpractice litigation as a default mode of trying to rectify all wrongs, whether caused by the attorney…
There are certain stays of the statute of limitations, universally. Here, in this legal malpractice case plaintiff offered the testimony of a psychologist, probably to prove that plaintiff was unable to commence an action, or protected from the running of the statute of limitations. It did not work here.Nickel v. Goldsmith & Tortora, Attorneys …
We ran acrossthis story today. Prior restraint of a blog, a legal malpractice case, and a question of who is actually posting the blog.
"Mystery Blogger Caught Up in First Amendment Flap
Posted December 3rd, 2008 by Sam Bayard
in Massachusetts Anonymity Legal Threat Prior Restraints
On Monday, the blog-hosting service Blogger took down…
The NYLJ reports a Judiciary Law 487 case today in which the claim survives. Empire Purveyors, Inc. v. Brief Justice & Kleinman, [subscription necessary] which was written by Justice Solomon in Supreme Court, New York County, holds that Judiciary Law 487 is applicable in both of its applications. The first application, deceit in an ongoing legal…
Because legal malpractice is always a "case within a case" it is a two step process. The very nature of the two step process gives rise to defendant’s ability to brag over winning either of the two legs. An example is Orick’s statement that they were vindicated, even after it was proven that the attorney violated…
Two huge names in the celebrity Blogosphere, Perez Hilton and Samantha Ronson along with Lindsay Lohan join together with lesser known attorney Martin Garbus to again demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of legal malpractice. We are betting that most readers will know the facts of this case. Disputes break out in every sphere, lawyers are called in…
An attorney must carefully and assiduously guard his client’s confidences, secrets and communications with the attorney. This remains true until the attorney has to defend himself. Must this defense be to criminal charges, or to ethical charges only? The answer is set forth in a recently decided case in the First Department.Hélie v McDermott, …
