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.
"Baron & Budd Alleges Ex-Shareholders Breached Duties by Planning Vioxx Venture With Lanie.
The breach of contract suit Dallas lawyers Fred Baron and Lisa Blue filed against Dallas plaintiffs firm Baron & Budd over payments for the sale of their equity interest in the firm to shareholder Russell Budd just got a whole lot more…
Hinshaw reports today that the ABA has issued an ethical finding which permits mining of metadata in digital discovery. Here is the cite for the ethical ruling.
We’re proud to announce that the New York Law Journal has published our Outside Counsel column on Legal Malpractice. Today’s article is on Legal Malpractice Statute of Limitations.
This is an Appellate Division 1st Department case, in accountant malpractice, not legal, but the lesson is similar. No continuous representation, as each tax year was different, staute of limitations lost on the malpractice, but fraud causes of action still permitted.
Mitschele, plaintiff-appellant v. Schultz, defendants-respondents
APPELLATE DIVISION
FIRST DEPARTMENT
"However, the fraud cause of…
Hinshaw and Culbertson reports this case, and answers in the affirmative: the case
Here is a law school problem: Mom, Dad and Kid are riding along and are hit from the side by another car. How many conflicts of interest can you find in this picture? None of the attorneys representing plaintiffs, defendants, counterclaimants or counterclaimant defendants found a single problem, but the court determined that there were too…
As I was reading this, a song about being lonely down in San Antonio came on the radio. The coincidence was too strong not to write about it. If you are in the field, here is CLE on legal malpractice. The announcement.
OK, so here is the story. Doctor and family is in a car crash. Doctor and family successfully sue for $10 million. However, he now sues his attorney because it all sort of got frittered away. There was the limit on the other car’s coverage, there were the trust deposits for the kids, there was…
We have never heard of this before, but apparently its a movement. Unbundled legal services are proceeding under a Mass program where an attorney represents a client in only one appearance, or for a small, singular issue, without taking over representation as a whole. We have reservations about what happens when the case goes sour. …
The "Anti-Divorce’" attorney has posted a site which trolls for legal malpractice cases. His pitch? He sues attorneys who settle divorce cases without the client’s permission, when the client really wants to stay married. Don’t clients have to allocute to the settlement in open court? Anyway, the site.
