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.
It’s in Scottsdale, AZ on September 19-21. Here are the details:
Fall 2007 National Legal Malpractice Conference
September 19-21, 2007 – Scottsdale, AZ
FOCUS ON CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS
A lawyer liability seminar designed to equip you to recognize and avoid communication failures that may result in legal malpractice or disciplinary actions.
Featured presentations:
– Special Pre-Conference…
Here is a partial report from the Georgia Daily Report [Subscription], which we believe is a legal newspaper there:
" A MONROE LAWYER and a Tennessee insurance defense firm who didn’t talk to their client before a wrongful death trial have been hit with a $991,950 legal malpractice verdict. But one of the plaintiff’s lawyers who…
Continuous representation of a client by the attorney acts as a toll of the statute of limitations. In New York, a legal malpractice cause of action accrues at the time of the mistake, but a client is not expcted to fire the attorney and sue, so long as the attorney continues to represent the client in the…
As the commentator says, trying a legal malpractice case as a pro-se is difficult, and a poor choice. This case was about publicity and litigation. Pro-se seems not to have opposed a motion for summary judgment, and lost her legal malpractice case.
:Filing a legal malpractice claim pro se is not the best idea.
Norman B. Arnoff and Susan Jacobs’recent article in the NYLJ reviewes three cases with new or novel legal malpractice allegations. They are Ideal Steel Supply Corp.v. Beil, Grochocinski v. Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw LLP, and Trautenberg v. Paul Weiss Rikind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
We reported on each of these cases, but the…
This is not an entirely new phenominon, nor totally unexpected, but this article relates how carriers and excess carriers are starting to bring legal malpractice law suits after unsuccessful [in this case read: payout] outcomes.
Author: Baldwin, Susan McParland; Breen, Lisa C.
"Malpractice suits by insurance companies against their defense attorneys are increasing. There are…
This is not strictly legal malpractice, but we wanted to report on this new statute. Indiscriminate use of youthful offender, or other sealed records of ACDs, dismissals are a frequent problem for attorneys. What are the rules? When do these arrest [but not conviction] records surface? What does a parent do for a kid who…
This Law.Com article describes a star attorney who is now a defendant in a legal malpractice suit in Washington DC.
"Renowned Washington, D.C., litigator Michele Roberts has the kind of reputation that makes other attorneys salivate with envy.
"She mesmerized juries," says Wiley Rein partner Barbara Van Gelder, who worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office…
David Dorfman was a legal malpractice defendant, and then got on the bad side of Federal Judge Denise Cote. He did not pay the judgment, and eventually, Judge Cote referred the case to the US Attorney. Here is the result from the NYLJ:
"Attorney Pleads Guilty to Contempt of Court
A lawyer who violated a…
A fee arbitration notice is an absolute condition precedent, and must have been given to the client before starting an attorney fee lawsuit. Here is a case from today in which a client "wins" the County bar fee arbitration, and the attorney seeks a de novo trial, only to have the case dismissed.
"PLAINTIFF LAW…
