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 had not heard of this particular branch of legal malpractice before, but upon examination, it is a classic.  Equity-stripping foreclosure  fraud legal malpractice.  Here’s the basic outline:  homeowner gets in financial trouble, faces foreclosure.  Group, including lawyers comes in, induces the homeowner to transfer ownership to avoid foreclosure.  Group gets a new mortgage, re-sells

Federal judge on Friday declined to dismiss a challenge to the constitutionality of New York state’s new rules on attorney advertising.

Northern District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr., sitting in Syracuse, set June 18 for the beginning of a trial on the constitutionality of the state’s new guidelines on attorney advertising.

The new rules, adopted

This headline caught my attention:

"The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct has voted "no confidence" in its chairman, matrimonial lawyer Raoul Felder, because of the inflammatory nature of a book, entitled "Schmucks!" he wrote with comedian Jackie Mason.

The agency’s 10 commissioners – all but Mr. Felder – were unanimous in expressing their

"A soon-to-be-released study by the American Bar Association shows that the number of legal malpractice suits lodged against "white shoe" firms has risen dramatically since 1996. While the case volume is still small, this study represents a costly, long-term problem for large corporate law firms." As the Cuban & Reyes blog tells us:

"In the

Here is an interesting re-cap of the issues:

"There seems to be more confusion than there should be over causes of action against lawyers for breach of fiduciary duty. A recent complaint (Download irell0409.pdf) by Charter Communications against Irell & Manella exemplifies the tendency of malpractice plaintiffs to plead breach of fiduciary duty claims as

These loses are from stolen money, not legal malpracitce.  The numbers are huge:  in the millions.

The NYLJ reports: "Dishonest attorneys prompted the awarding of $7.1 million in 2006 from the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, which warned yesterday that the fund is likely to start seeing claims from the largest case of lawyer

This Madison Record article contains a months work of issues: conflict of interest, change of venue, prejudice, blackmail, child ponography, indictments, plaintiff’s attorney joining the firm he has sued;  it just goes on and on.

"When Gary Peel joined the Lakin Law Firm in September 2003, he had spent the previous 17 months accusing the