---

Did the County tell you, "you can't do that?" It may be wise to seek a second opinion from someone with creativity and aggressiveness tempered with knowledge.

My legal mentor, Charles S. Rand (no relation), had years of experience as a zoning lawyer with the Montgomery County Attorney's Office, including working with the Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services, and he had vast experience in many real estate, zoning and land use matters, everything from sheds in the backyard to large housing developments and skyscraper buildings in Bethesda. Included in these areas were representing individuals and homeowners associations before Montgomery County courts (both the District Courts and Circuit Courts) and the Board of Appeals. I spent about ten years working with Chuck Rand before the courts and Board of Appeals, and have had the privilege since then of being able to call on his real estate zoning and land use expertise through 2005. It probably seems to many persons that zoning and land use matters are over-regulated in Montgomery County, and most of these people have never actually spent time poring over the many tedious and interconnected zoning and land-use provisions of the Montgomery County Zoning Code, the fire code, etc. Indeed the issues of real estate building and land use restrictions and requirements are very detailed and complicated, and it is a treacherous area of the law to navigate without an experienced real estate zoning lawyer.

---

Thomas Rand is a lawyer who has considerable experience in civil litigation in courts in Maryland and D.C., including contract disputes over real estate developments and commercial projects, other types of real property cases, and homeowners' association disputes. Thomas Rand was an attorney in one of the largest dollar cases in Montgomery County, Maryland in the 1980's, involving a contract dispute surrounding a 400+ acre farm in upper Montgomery County, with a contract over 35 pages long, involving a host of re-zoning contingencies and many other complexities. At 26 years old, with only three years' experience practicing law, Mr. Rand argued a summary judgment motion in this multi-million dollar case against a top-notch lawyer with twenty years' experience, who was a former president of both the Montgomery County and Maryland Bar Associations. If you think you might soon become embroiled in a serious civil litigation matter, you should seek legal advice immediately. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" does not apply only to medicine.

---