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.
NY Lawyer [and Law.com] report that Linklaters is being sued for $55 million in "one of the largest cases against a top U.K. law firm in recent times.
The Magic Circle firm is preparing for a 20-day trial in the High Court next January over claims it gave negligent advice to Baltic telecoms company Levicom.…
As part of the "but for" rule, a hypothetical judgment which plaintiff would have won, except for the attorney’s mistake, is the measure of damages in legal malpractice. We have written about this in the New York Law Journal. [4/20/07] The defense of collectibility is that even if successful in the case below, plaintiff would…
To what extent may a legal malpractice defendant seek disclosure of privileged discussions? The general answer is if they are "at issue" in the legal malpractice. Here in the Akin Gump legal malpractice case is a good example. From Law.Com:
"Manhattan appeals court has narrowed the scope of discovery Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld…
The Times Leader reports on a $ 3.4 Million legal malpractice action taking place there, now, post verdict. The twist is that the winner of the case, executor of an estate had asked the trial judge to recuse himself because of financial conflict of interest.
"Attorneys for the Slusser family have asked Luzerne County Court…
This case from New Jersey illustrates the border line between behavior that is so bad that an expert is not needed at trial to testify on whether there was a deviation, and behavior that is bad, but still requires an expert. The NJ court found in TARUTIS, v. ALAN ACKERMAN and GREGORY WISOTSKY, that:
"No…
Arbitration clauses in attorney-client retainer agreements is a trend. Law firms, who presumably know the costs and efficiencies of litigation choose arbitration in the belief that most cases they are involved in will be a fee dispute. Legal malpractice, either as a counterclaim to a fee demand or on its own does sometimes intrude, however.…
Plaintiff wanted to sue his opponent’s attorneys. While the ability to sue your opponent’s attorney is very restricted, [see: lack of privity}, in certain circumstances it is possible. This case:
Blum v Perlstein
2008 NY Slip Op 00439
Decided on January 22, 2008
Appellate Division, Second Department
appears to stand for the proposition that plaintiff…
He was one of the best known, and feared plaintiff’s attorneys in New York. He had entire floors of offices at the Woolworth building in lower Manhattan, and early every morning a large number of trial attorneys would gather for breakfast and pick up their day’s work. The Eisen and Napoli firm won gazillions of dollars…
We reported this confluence of Politics, Legal Malpractice and big estate probate work several weeks ago. Defendants were R. Christopher Bell, the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial nominee and a former U.S. congressman; Annette M. Henry; and their former firm, Bell & Henry in Houston.
Today, the Texas Lawyer Blog writes: "former client’s breach-of-fiduciary duty…
Here, in an early report from the Competition Law 360 Blog is a report that:
"Kaye Scholer LLP is facing a legal malpractice suit over the way attorneys handled several antitrust suits accusing Celanese Americas Corp. of fixing the price of polyester staple fiber.
The suit, filed late last month in Dallas County, Texas, was…
