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’ve written about retaining and charging liens, the Judiciary law, and how hearings on attorney fees can have collateral estoppel effects on legal malpractice litigation. Here is aConnecticut case which discusses the same issues, albeit in a habeas corpus and "file retention" setting.
Plaintiff hired the target attorney, had 13 boxes of files…
Law.Com reports that the law firm of Ballard Spahr won a jury trial yesterday.
Beyond the usual legal malpractice issues and testimony, there was plenty of star power [in a law sort of way] as " famed Florida litigator Roy Black of Black Srebnick Kornspan & Stumpf represented Epstein along with Boca Raton-based Lance W. Shinder…
This case, Elacqua v. Physicians Reciprocal Insurers is a medical malpractice matter, in which the doctors had both covered and non-covered claims against them Naturally, the insurance company had coverage for certain of the claims. Although this case is in the medical malpractice area, it is fully applicable to legal malpractice.
The insurer was…
Law.Com reports that "Alston & Bird and and the bankruptcy trustee for one of its former clients, the beleaguered Friedman’s Jewelers Inc., are on the verge of settling a suit over allegations that the firm committed legal malpractice. "
"Alston & Bird, which served as Friedman’s outside general counsel from the 1990s until the…
The case of Rozen v. Nite Rider Group, Inc. seems to be going on in three different venues. There was the original case, based on loans and property noldings, there is a legal malpractice case, and apparently there is also a Judiciary Law 487 case too. "This motion by former defense counsel, Russ &…
An action agains tShearman & Sterling for failures in a loan transaction continues, after the First Department affirmed denial of a motion to dismiss. In Garten v. Shearman & Sterling.
"Plaintiff has stated a cause of action for legal malpractice by alleging that "but for" defendant’s failure to prepare and procure documents necessary…
One unique aspect of Legal Malpractice is the principal that an attorney may not be held responsible for a strategic decision, even if it is a loser. So long as it is reasonable, both subjectively and objectively, the attorney will not be held in legal malpractice.
This 2d Circuit case,Rubens v. Mason bears on…
One of the more pleasant aspects of reading cases early in the morning is the occasional new word or concept that leaps from the page. This article discusses a court official called the "Prothonotary," A prothonotary is an elected Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas Civil Division.
"A $3.4 million legal malpractice verdict in…
One of the more fascinating aspects of legal malpractice is the large catchment area. That jargon, from psychology simply means that almost everyone uses attorneys, whether the largest CEO, or a hip hop magi zine employee who alleges sexual harassment.
Here, two employees of The Source were fired, and they sued. Their attorneys Thompson Wigdor &…
It takes a lot of vexing conduct to be foreclosed from bringing an action in state court. One has to be very, very obstinate and really tick the judge off. To do so in a legal malpractice setting is even harder, because the general feeling is that plaintiff must have been hurt by a lawyer…
