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.
Anthony Lin in the NYLJ reports that a law firm which was successful in a $1.2 million dollar assault case may only take its 1/3 contingency fee. It had charged another $ 450,000 for appellate and collateral work without an additional retainer, and without even a letter to the client.
"Lawyers whose original retainer agreement…
The NYLJ reports today that
"A federal judge in Manhattan has thrown out a lawsuit filed against Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison by the onetime private banker to former WorldCom Inc. chief executive officer Bernard Ebbers.
David H. Trautenberg, the former co-head of Citigroup’s private wealth management group, sued Paul Weiss in December for…
In another Estate and Beneficiary case, plaintiff loses in this Missouri case/ The Show Me Blog reports:
"Missouri court of Appeals Southern District dismisses deceased heirs’ combined suit against deceased’s second wife and the law firm that prepared their joint wills after widow disinherited the deceased’s children after he died."
Law is the underlying organizer of all things human. No part of society is truely lawless, and everything that has to do with the government is law based. No surprise, but here is a blurb from farm and farmer rights activists, touching on legal malpractice.
"Some USDA employees, including a top official in the…
In this NJ Case, the client had an illetimate purpose in bringing the law suit. Plaintiffs proved the case for malicious prosecution against the client, but not against the client’s attorney.
Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla represented a beach club owner in a failed defamation suit against a neighbor. The neighbor, having won, countersued the…
Imagine having made enough on a case to have to repay $ 62 Million! FromLaw Com:
"Three attorneys accused of bilking their clients in a diet drug settlement must repay at least $62.1 million in settlement funds and interest, a Kentucky judge ruled Friday.
Special Judge William Wehr ordered William J. Gallion, 56…
Estate and surrogate proceedings create a unique problem in legal malpracitce. May the estate sue the transactional [will] lawyer? Does a beneficiary have a relationship with the attorney. Here, in this case we see another face of the problem. In Velasquez v Katz ,2007 NY Slip Op 06275 , Decided on July 31, 2007…
"In New York an attorney may not be held liable for errors in judgment" So goes the black-letter law. Here is an illustration of two principals from this Michigan case. The first is that legal malpractice claims regarding an appeal are not jury questions. The second is that errors of judgment are not a solid foundation…
Austin Texas Blogspot reports this multi-state, multi-court personal injury – bakruptcy – legal malpractice case arising from an auto accident. Texas, California, personal jurisdiction, the place of the wrong. All are mixed in this swirl. Eric Red v. John Doherty and Doherty & Catlow, A Law Corporation,
No. 03-06-00478-CV (Tex.App.- Austin, Jul. 20, 2007)(Opinion…
In a recent successful case, plaintiff was a large real estate management company. Plaintiff was involved in a 500 million dollar financing involving 3 NYC downtown buildings. The general counsel asked one of the multiple large firms whether "mortgage spreading" could be used to avoid payment of new mortgage tax. When told "no", the financing…
