7 April 2011

            Yoga blocks.  When told to grab them in most environments, you’d probably expect to be in for a nice, soothing workout.  Perhaps harps are playing in the background, along with sounds of a babbling brook or gentle rainstorm.  Unfortunately, unless you’re a member of the air assault PT group, being told to get yoga blocks assures only a couple things: 1) the muscles that compose your chest are about to be punished intensely, and 2) you’re about to lose a fair amount of water in the form of sweat.

(Oh yay!! What colorful fun these are! False. Your pectoral muscles will stringently disagree.)

            We used the blocks to assist in our push up workout today, and it met both #1 and #2.  The blocks were used so that we could go lower than parallel in our push up tabatta sets.  We did several sets that rotated through push up variants, with little break in between each.  PT finished with use of the blocks for planks, where we’d hold ourselves in the push up position, with toes on a curb, and a hand on each block.

            The first block of instruction began a chunk that is of particular relevance to me and a large chunk of the class: legal assistance.  Since legal assistance is the office a huge majority of new JAs head to after OBC, the material covered is designed to be as practically useful as possible.

(I blew $7.50 on seeing this movie, thinking it was about the importance of legal assistance for new JAs.  Thanks a lot, Denzel.)

            While legal assistance covers a massive area of law, the areas taught in OBC are some of the high points (and points that see the most clients).  The block is broken down into 1/3 consumer law (which has a graded practical exercise), 1/3 family law (which has an essay exam), and 1/3 tax and estate planning (which has a graded practical exercise).

            Our morning classes began with an hour on legal assistance programs and services, which gave everyone a flyby of what the average LA office covers, and included introductory information on how they operate. 

     We followed this with our first hour of consumer law.  I’m pleased to say that after a long hiatus during the fiscal law block, funny videos and asides are finally back.  Most professors will take brief intermissions in class to show relevant, but funny videos that illustrate a point.  It might not seem like much, but they’re valuable mental breaks in the middle of otherwise long hours of instruction. 

(Huzzah for the return of memes.)

     The consumer law material is already really interesting.  Most of it covers things that we all encounter in our own lives, such as the law controlling the actions of door-to-door salesmen, or of car sales.  From the information in the first hour, we learned that a large number of LA clients have these sorts of issues, which gives this area a dual importance: 1) it’s great information to learn for your own protection; 2) it’s critical information to possess in order to protect soldiers who may have been taken advantage of.

     The afternoon started off with a demonstration of a client meeting.  One of our upcoming assignments is to write a rebuttal to a letter of reprimand (on the same facts as the letter of reprimand we drafted way back in admin law).  This block gave us the chance not only to see a live client interview, and the skills needed for conducting those, but also a chance to learn facts not in our seminar packet, but which will be critical in drafting our rebuttals.

Our last class of the day was an introduction to estate planning, which represents one of the largest reasons why soldiers visit the LA office.  I can’t sugarcoat things and say that it’s the most interesting material in the world, but (much like consumer law), it was made more interesting by its dual relevance.