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.
We believe that they really play hardball in New Jersey, putting NY attorneys to shame. Here, sanctions and attorney fees seem to be the apex of unsocial behavior, and once in a while, a fist fight. But New Jersey!!!
This story illustrates how far they would go. "A federal judge denounced lawyers at Hackensack’s Cole…
In the Creditanstalt Inv. Bank AG v Chadbourne & Parke LLP , 2007 NYSlipOp 02794 .April 3, 2007 ,
Appellate Division, First Department case, the AD1 allowed an invasion of the attorney-client privilege regarding discussions plaintiff had with other law firms about the problem they sued over.
Although the dissent makes a good case…
Malpractice is a professional’s failure to use minimally adequate levels of care, skill or diligence in the performance of the professional’s duties, causing harm to another. In New York, attorney malpractice is defined as a "deviation from good and accepted legal practice, where the client has been proximately damaged by that deviation, but for which…
Clients understood that a request for legal fees in Surrogate’s Court would preclude any legal malpractice case later. Their claim was that they would have accepted a settlement offer, but their attorney assured them that they had a meritorious case. Surrogate’s court then ruled against them in the will contest. Attorney sought fees, they sued…
TheLA Times reports on a proposed legal malpractice insurance disclosure rule in California.
"California lawyers will have to tell their clients whether they carry malpractice insurance under a proposed rule that opponents say could add to the costs of going to court.
About 20% of the state’s 150,000 lawyers don’t have malpractice coverage, according…
The Blog, LA BizObserved reports that:
"Malpractice disclosure: A task force of the State Bar of California is proposing that lawyers be required to tell their clients whether they carry malpractice insurance (about 20 percent of the state’s 150,000 lawyers don’t, many of them sole practitioners). Opponents say the the requirement could force all lawyers…
Attorney 1 starts to look at a case for client, files a retainer statement and a month later is told to stop work. Attorney 2 starts to work on the case, but we do not know what happened after that, except that the case settled for $ 450,000. Michael B. Miller PC v. Joel …
Client is in an auto accident. Attorney 1 works the case, brings it to a $ 600,000 settlement offer. Client goes for a 2d opinion, and they tell him the first attorney committed malpractice by not bringing a derivitive action for the wife. 2d Attorney ups the offer to $950,000 which the client accepts.
Who…
A recurring situation is the question of whether an attorney who prepares a will can be held liable to the estate or even more distantly, to the beneficiaries for work performed before the death. Here ia a NJ case where plaintiff loses. CARL TORBAN, individually and as Executor of the Estate of Albie J. Torban…
New York newspapers don”t generally inform the public about civil trials. The Madison Record regularly reports on civil cases, and from them we get this story:
"Brad Lakin didn’t know that a federal judge in Oklahoma entered default judgment of about $4 million against his firm until he read about it in a newspaper, according…
