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.
In Bei Yang v. Pagan Law Firm P.C. Slip Opinion No: 2022 NY Slip Op 73132(U), Decided on October 18, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department, determined that Plaintiff may not use a pseudonym in a legal malpractice law suit.
“And plaintiff-appellant having moved, pro se, to suppress allegedly improperly obtained privileged information of psychotherapy…
Sometimes the AD finds that a consent to change attorney is the terminating event for continuous representation and sometimes not. Ellison v Seltzer, 2022 NY Slip Op 05786
Decided on October 18, 2022 Appellate Division, First Department is a case where the “mutual understanding of the need for further representation” trumped the “failure to…
Lee v Leifer 2022 NY Slip Op 05793 Decided on October 18, 2022 Appellate Division, First Department is the startling story of an attorney who told his client that it was better and more efficient not to answer a complaint. The strategy worked well, until it didn’t.
“The Leifer defendants (Leifer) represented Lee in a…
In York v Frank 2022 NY Slip Op 05738 Decided on October 12, 2022 Appellate Division, Second Department, after discarding the statute of limitations as a reason to dismiss, the Second Department took up an alternative reason to dismiss. This was done even though the parties did not address the issue.
“Although the Supreme Court…
Courts determine when the statute of limitations begins to run against an attorney in one of two general ways. Either continuous representation ends when there is no longer a relationship of trust and confidence (acrimonious communication) or when the attorney withdraws. Both can be the basis for the onset of the statute. In York v …
Purchase at an auction at your risk. That is one of the lessons in Markov v Barrows 2022 NY Slip Op 04780 [208 AD3d 401] August 2, 2022 Appellate Division, First Department. Of course, what is true in the underlying case is true in a legal malpractice case which follows the purchase of a medal…
Curtis v Berutti 2022 NY Slip Op 22307 Decided on August 24, 2022 Supreme Court, Orange County McElduff Jr., J. illustrates two points which frequently come up in legal malpractice cases: privity and collateral estoppel. If a guardian hires an attorney to represent the guardian (and his ward) does the ward eventually have standing to…
Beneficiaries to a will can often show losses, and even damages (which are not necessarily the same), but almost always lack the standing to sue estate planning attorneys, as beneficiaries are not the Administrator or Executor(trix) of the estate. In Alford v Katz 2022 NY Slip Op 05397 Decided on September 30, 2022 Appellate Division,…
Attorneys are afforded a very wide swath of protection when they act as criminal defense attorneys. They cannot be successfully sued for legal malpractice unless the client can show that they are “free of a conviction” or demonstrate “actual innocence” That did not happen in Brooks v Shechtman 2022 NY Slip Op 33155(U) September 19,…
Relief for violation of Judiciary Law § 487 is not “lightly given.” Facebook, Inc. v. DLA Piper LLP (US) . As an example, in AmTrust N. Am., Inc. v Pavloff 2022 NY Slip Op 02862 [204 AD3d 599] April 28, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department found, in essence, that a mere lie is not…
