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.
Legal Malpractice can pop up in any number of situations. Here is a totally unexpected possibility. In a Blog blurb the Construction Attorney Blog talks about this problem:
"Much is being written about the 2007 AIA Documents, which were released in early November. One of the much-discussed differences in these documents is the fact that…
It is usually defendant’s strategy to blame the client, at least to some extent. Here in this case, even the court joined in. Plaintiff was in an auto accident, hired an attorney who filed the complaint, and then gave up on discovery responses. Case dismissed, and incidently, the attorney was suspended, for an unrelated…
Here is a case in which a husband’s creditors executed upon his wife’s jewlery. Attorney is hired and the case ends with her having to give up 1/2 of the booty. Husband then sues the attorney. Guess? He hired the attorney for his wife, as a nominal defendant, since it was his creditors going after…
Here is a case from the Bronx in which a matrimonial client unsuccessfully sues her attorney. Case is dismissed on the statute of limitations. This was a pro-se plaintiff v. pro-se defendant case.
"From June 12, 2000 to September 7, 2000, Plaintiff KINBERG retained Defendant GARR to represent her in her matrimonial Action, (which had…
Sidewalk trip and fall cases have special problems associated with them. As municipalities grew tired of being sued, they enacted strict notice rules, which, along with the General Municipal Law filing procedures, made for a maze.
Here is an example [from Newsbriefs of the NYLJ] of a case in which the town required plaintffs to file their…
When a person who has a personal injury case files bankruptcy, they, in essence, give up that asset to the Trustee in Bankruptcy. If the recovery is greater than the creditor’s claims, then the plaintiff may get some money. If not, then the entire proceeds go to the creditors.
Going along with this, the trustee…
Here is a story from Texas about a legal malpractice [or is it?] case in which the insurer asks the court to determine that it owes no defense. The reason is not the usual "no notice’ or "fraud in the application." In this particular instance, the insurance company believes that the behavior complained of is…
Arising in the nature of inadvertant attorney client privilege, the question of meta data was recently discussed by Hinshaw:
"The D.C. Bar Association Legal Ethics Committee concluded that when a lawyer has actual knowledge that an adversary has inadvertently provided metadata in an electronic document, the lawyer should not review the metadata without contacting…
Here is an interesting tidbit on fake lawyers, and the problems created by them.
"The Problem of Barring Phony Lawyers from Practice
With so many bona fide lawyers struggling to obtain a job or attract clients, it’s hard to believe that some people not only manage to impersonate real lawyers, but find real business and…
They lost the huge legal malpractice case, he may be horse of the year. It’s astudy in contrasts. Plaintiffs may be tne new owners of the Preakness and the Breeders Cup Stakes Winner .
"A state judge has given the plaintiffs, in a lawsuit against three lawyers, the right to claim part ownership of the…
