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.
Qualcom v. Boradcom Corp. is an important case. Duane Morris reports that it will set the standard for all electronic discovery in litigation. Once the standard is set, attorneys will be expected to heed and obey.
"The district court was particularly concerned with upholding the good faith standard necessitated by the discovery system and…
Electronic Discovery is with us, has been regulated, and there are now standards for its use in litigation. Attorneys for clients now have to advise on how to store, produce, resist demands, and comply with the appropriate rules.
Whenever there is general agreement upon a standard of practice, the question of deviation from that standard…
What does a client do when faced with an attorney fee demand? As is true with most things in life, a reflexive response is precisesly the wrong move. Many clients [and unfortunately many attorneys] advise or choose to arbitrate the fee dispute. Bravely, they go to the arbitration and argue piecemeal against the fee.
Let’s look…
It is rare to see a pro-se defendant in the rarified air of Federal District Court, even more rare for both sides to be pro-se. Here, in DANIEL KIRK and LINDA KIRK, v. JOSEPH M. HEPPT, ESQ.,
05 Civ. 9977 (RWS) UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK January 16…
Here is the hypothetical: Plaintiff hires attorney A to prosecute an action against the State of New York, and does not timely file a notice of claim. There is still time within the statute of limitations to file a motion seeking leave to file a late notice of claim.
Plaintiff hires attorney B to sue…
Wrangles between lawyers is certainly no headline. Lawyers allowing venom to overpower reason similarly is no news. The case of Minchew, Santner & Brenner, LLP, and Jamie M. Minchew, v. John H. Somoza, Eleftherios Kravaris, Melito & Anderson, P.C., Westport Insurance Corporation and Louis Venezia, SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, RICHMOND COUNTY ,2008 NY…
The West Virginia Record reports this case in which plaintiff was terminated by his employer. Plaintiff’s claim is that he was fired for doing jury service. He retained defendant attorney, and the case was litigated in Federal District Court, where it was dismissed on summary judgment.
Plaintiff claims that the attorney did not depose supporting…
Here is our article from the New York Law Journal on Attorney Client Privilege and Legal Malpractice.
CEO Gregory Reyes was sentenced this week. Judge Charles Breyer told him that a false affidavit netted him 21 months rather than 15 months. Here’s the problem for Reyes: his attorney drafted the document, and admitted his own "poor drafting."
So, is this the rare occurrence when an attorney creates the situation in which his…
When does the statute of limitations start to run on a legal malpractice case in Pennsylvania. Hinshwaw reports on this issue.
"The Pennsylvania Superior Court held that the statute of limitations for a legal malpractice claim begins to run when the malpractice is committed and is only tolled until the plaintiff should reasonably have found…
