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.
IPOs mean big money, Securities trading means big money, and the REFCO IPO has led to a $1 Billion legal malpractice case. This story is all about big money.
"A court-appointed trustee responsible for retrieving funds for Refco Inc. creditors has sought more than $2 billion in damages from a prominent Chicago law firm, three…
Law.Com reports: "A unanimous panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a $1 million legal malpractice judgment against the law firm Gunster Yoakley & Stewart awarded to the heirs of the Gannett newspaper fortune.
The case arose from a dispute over the estate of Charles V. McAdam Jr., a wealthy Palm Beach,…
This case takes a graph to try to understand. Here is a legal malpractice case in Texas, involving BP and an explosion.
Plaintiffs hire attorney Krist to sue BP, after an explosion. Krist successfully sues BP and settles the case, taking no fee. Krist represented the husband only, and not the wife in a loss…
Small town law is a different animal. NYC lawyers often have no experience, or forget how different law is in the outlying districts. The NY Times recently ran a series of articles on justice courts upstate, and on the thousands of non-lawyer judges there.
Here is a shocking story. Small town judge [actually a…
This interesting twist on an old fashioned desire to win an appeal comes from Texas. Attorney brings legal malpractice case and loses. He goes to a hearing with his own court reporter, saying it’s to capture any off the record comments by the judge, "in order to to capture for purposes of an appeal…
First, our disclosure. We were a prosecutor, and we have done a little criminal defense work, but we have never been in this position, as told by Law.Blog
"A public defender in Ohio was arrested on Thursday for contempt of court after he declined to move forward with a misdemeanor assault trial he had been…
Legal malpractice is not just about missed personal injury statutes, nor about simple failures in calendar practice. Here is an anti-trust legal malpractice case involving Mylan Labs and the Eliot Disner law firm. The lab paid out more than $ 150 million in penalties and disgorgement.
"In June, Mylan Laboratories Inc. and UDL Laboratories…
Law Com relays this story of an attorney-executor who had control of an estate’s charitible contributions, and is now being sued for his selection of where to give away the money.
"A Pittsburgh no-kill animal shelter has filed a five-count lawsuit against a Pittsburgh attorney, alleging that he illegally reduced its portion of a wealthy…
Law.Com reports that the KPMG trial continues, and more attorney witnesses are being called to testify.
"Collateral damage from the KPMG tax shelter imbroglio has struck Hogan & Hartson and two of the firm’s most prominent attorneys — Prentiss Feagles, co-director of the firm’s tax practice, and Paul Rogers, a partner in the firm’s…
Its a horrible story. A respected person, in this case a judge, convicted of rape, reversed and exonorated on appeal now sues for legal malpractice. Forgetting the technical issues of arbitration or trial of the legal malpractice case, how terrible a situation is this?
