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.
Law.Com reports this case Acosta v. PACE Local I-300 Health Fund, 04-CV-3885
"A New Jersey federal judge’s dismissal of legal malpractice and breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims against counsel in an ERISA case shows that trustees sued for misfeasance can’t easily pass the buck to their lawyers.
Though he dismissed the claims on procedural grounds, U.S. District…
Here is a case in which a divorce attorney was permitted it attach a lien to the equitable distribution. Generally, a new "fund" must be created by the attorney’s work [as in a personal injury case with a settlement], but here, the attorney got to attach property which was already the wife’s.
From the NYLJ …
Here is a story which about a legal malpracice suit in Detroit. Plaintiffs say that one law firm argued in Canada to build a bridge, and in the US to stop the bridge. The article.
"A two-timing law firm has jeopardized the Ambassador Bridge owner’s $500 million plan to build a second span between Detroit…
Will there be an estate of Anna Nicole Smith Legal Malpractice Case. This particular commentator thinks so. Johanna Grossman of Findlaw thinks so in this article.
"There were at least two pending lawsuits against her at the time of her death, which will likely now be waged against her estate. Anna Nicole had spent recent…
Nextel workes bring legal malpractice action against Leeds Morelli & Brown.
"A group of former Nextel employees from New Jersey alleges that their former lawyers struck a sweetheart deal with the wireless communications giant to cap a settlement of their discrimination claims.
The five plaintiffs — all former employees at Nextel’s Rutherford office — are…
One rarely finds an article about the business side of law firms, and almost never about legal malpractice. We reported this bankruptcy and legal malpractice problem for Coudert Brothers a while back. Today Ellen Rosen of the New York Times reports:
"At one time, the breakup of a big, prestigious law firm was rare. But…
This case from Kings county is puzzling because the court found it was permitted to treat a 3211[a][7] motion as a 3212 Motion for Summary Judgment, without notice to the parties, based upon use of extrinsic materials. Read the decision:
"Defendants, Lindenbaum & Young and Alan Young, Esq. (the Young defendants), in this legal malpractice…
We cover attorney fee disputes in and out of legal malpractice. This outcome [temporary] is quite unusual. Jail is rarely a contemplated outcome in an attorney fee dispute. The details.
"A murder defendant’s attorneys wrangling over fee cuts from the agency that governs public defenders has led them to be held in contempt, ordered…
Here is a PLI web seminar on how to pick the right legal malpractice insurance. The Seminar is a year or so old, but the faculty is stellar. Take a look.
Divorce and legal malpractice often intertwine. Issues that regularly come up are insufficient discovery of the husband’s business or accounts, failure to ensure correct tax treatment of the marital estate. inequitable distribution based upon ill-considered stipulations, and faiures to present experts. One site writing about divorce and litigation is Daniel Clement’s New York Divorce…
