EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Bastone is no longer practicing full-time.

With a warmth and directness that has endured through his nearly four decades practicing law, Frank Bastone has achieved unique status: He is one of the few trial attorneys who, peers say, has the respect of the judges he appears before. Ever candid (and capable of occasional salty language), the 63-year-old Bronx native is also a thoughtful attorney who’s helped build one of the most successful medical malpractice defense firms in the region. Indeed, Bastone carries on a family tradition of accomplishment: Born in Fort Apache, the Bronx, Bastone’s father (who had arrived from Italy as a teen) owned bars and restaurants in the borough; Frank managed them at night and decided to go to Law School “because there wasn’t much to do in the daytime”; receiving his degree at age twenty. Scoring highly on his law admissions tests, he was admitted to Yale Law School but “my dad didn’t want me going off to some school in New Haven; Italian families weren’t exactly democracies in those days.” He returned to Fordham, a few subway stops away.

One of his first jobs was with famed trial lawyer Harry Lipsig, who finally allowed his staff Saturday afternoons off in the summer (“He constantly complained about the erosion of the workweek”). In 1970 at thirty years old, he joined Clifford Bartlett (Bartlett was named to The Ten Leaders of Civil Trial & Personal Injury Law of Long Island last year) in what became the state’s top defense firm in the growing field of medical malpractice law. He joined as the firm’s eleventh attorney; twenty-five years later the firm had two hundred. In 1994 he joined with former partners and launched Barlett, McDonough, Bastone & Monaghan, LLP., further building their reputations as expert defenders of hospitals and physicians. Today their fifteen-partner practice remains one of the leading malpractice-defense firms in the state, with substantial offices in both Mineola and White Plains (“We have a spirited rivalry with our billable hours”).

Bastone’s cases take him to The Bronx and Westchester, somewhat contrasting venues today, where huge jury awards often hinge on subtle – and not-so-subtle – social and class issues involving the juries themselves. “None of that makes our job any easier,” says Bastone. Today Bastone, the veteran of hundreds of malpractice-defense cases, cites medical issues with the ease and authority of a veteran physician. Bastone, who moved his family to Armonk, N.Y., 20 years ago, today takes pride in three children of remarkable accomplishment: His daughter is a graduate of Yale and Columbia and now a PhD candidate in Bio-statistics and eEpidermiology; and he has two sons, (one an attorney), who are products of Georgetown/Fordham and Penn/NYU.

Golf was never his bag – “I gave away my clubs on the ninth hole of my first round.”