Attorney and Architect

Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to express an interest in an attorney position with your firm. I am admitted to practice in the State of California, and am in the process of applying for reciprocity with the District of Columbia Bar. Prior to passing the Bar, I practiced as an architect for eight years specializing in health care architecture. I have been part of the design teams of various healthcare project including hospitals, assisted living facilities, and medical office buildings. Key buildings that I had an active role in include Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Providence Hospital in the District of Columbia, Arnot Egden Medical Center in Elmira, New York, and the Oklahoma University Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Of the most recent projects, the Arnot Egden Medical Center consisted of 41,000 square foot of new construction and 47,000 square foot of renovation totaling in $1.45 million construction budget. The Oklahoma University Children’s Hospital was a 336,000 square foot project with a $300 million construction budget. In my role as an architect, I have extensive experience in project coordination, management, and of regulation compliance and advocacy. I have worked with national safety procedures such as OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Act), ADA (American with Disabilities Act), and BOCA (Building Officials and Code Administrators). I have also worked with various federal and state administrative agencies to secure preliminary building review from state healthcare departments, to conduct presentation of master planning concepts for review board hearings, and to petition for approval of building permits. As an attorney, I have experiences and training in the areas of administrative law. I have participated in informal regulatory negotiations with state agencies such as state Department of Health, and the state Department of Environmental Quality, in gaining approval for individualized variances. Such particularized variances stemmed from circumstances including a building’s age, it’s financial and life cycle, and its pre-new construction conditions. I am also trained in the areas of environmental law and federal public land and resources law. Specifically, I am familiar with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Resource and Conservation Act. Lastly, I have extensive training in the areas of alternative dispute resolution. In particular, I took courses and participated in simulated client negotiations. In the latter, I received the CALI (Computer Assisted Legal Instruction Excellence Award) award as the student with the highest grade in Client Representation in Negotiation. This training included practice sessions of negotiations on matters including contract actions, labor and employment disputes, juvenile offenses, will contestations, and plea bargaining. My extensive construction and legal background and my targeted experiences in analyzing and interpreting policies to ensure compliance renders me an attorney fluent with the regulatory and compliance rhetoric. Having completed law school in 3 ½ years in ¾ time capacity while working as a full time architect, I am effective at multi-tasking, prioritizing, and time management. Should you find that my work experience, legal training, and fluency in Mandarin Chinese coincide with needs of your firm, I will be glad to provide any additional information you might be interested in. Thank you. Sincerely, Sandy S Chang

Adjudicator

Silver Spring, MD