The Boyk Brief
Go into chambers with attorneys Chuck Boyk, Mike Bruno, Zac Shaffer, and the attorneys of Charles Boyk Law Offices on The Boyk Brief, as we talk with interesting personalities from the legal world, celebrities, experts, business & community leaders, and other engaging people about a variety of topics.
The Boyk Brief
Julia Benfield - Boyk's Law's Secret Weapon
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In this episode, I sit down with Julia Benfield. As a nurse, paralegal, entrepreneur, and former Karate instructor, Julia is a true renaissance woman and is a force to be reckoned with. Julia and I talked through her varied career starting with nursing, then jumping into the worlds of law, education, and entrepreneurship. We also talk about the incredible value Julia adds as for our clients a nurse paralegal here at Boyk Law. We wrap up by talking about the local winery she and her husband run! http://www.benfieldwines.com/
Welcome to the Boyk Brief. I'm Desmond Strue, Marketing Director at the Charles E. Boick Law Offices located in Toledo, Ohio. The BoIck Brief invites you to go into chambers with the attorneys of Boyk Law as we explore real legal cases, talk to talk to fascinating people in our area, raise awareness about community initiatives, and share helpful information about protecting yourself and those you love. In this episode, I sit down with Julia Benfield. As a nurse, paralegal, entrepreneur, and former karate instructor, Julia is a true Renaissance woman and a force to be reckoned with. Julia and I talk through her varied career, starting with nursing, then jumping into the worlds of law, education, and entrepreneurship. We also talk about the incredible value she adds to our clients here at the firm as a nurse paralegal, and then wrap up by talking about the local winery that she and her husband run, somehow in her spare time. All of this coming up on the Boik Brief. Welcome to the Boik Brief. I am very, very honored and delighted to have in the studio with us today someone who I have admired from afar at the firm for quite some time, but now I'm very happy to have a chance to get to know Julia Benfield. How are you today?
SPEAKER_02Good morning. I'm great.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you so much for being here. And Julia, I was looking through your LinkedIn, and I have to say, all the things you do make me exhausted and make me feel very unproductive. So, Julia, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_02Sure. I am married. We have four kids. Our youngest is 20 and our oldest is 30, so they're all adulting and doing well.
SPEAKER_00That's great to hear.
SPEAKER_02Um the youngest is in grad school and he still lives at home, but he's helps us at the winery, and he's a great kid.
SPEAKER_00Well that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02I have been a nurse for 26 years in various different areas of nursing. And I currently work at one of the hospitals here in the city of Toledo as a nurse educator, and I also have a second job there in the emergency department, working as an ER nurse and as a forensic nurse. So I own a winery in Swanton and I own a legal nurse consulting business and also in Swanton, where I do cases for mostly prosecutors but some defense cases specializing in strangulation, domestic violence, and sexual assault. I was a karate instructor up until December of this year. I had to give that up because I had too many things to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it seems like it.
SPEAKER_02I sit on the board for the Swanton Area Community Coalition. Um I also sit on, I am the chairman of the Swanton Chamber of Commerce. I am the vice chair of the Lucas County Domestic Violence Task Force. I am also on the Lucas County Fatality Review, which is a subcommittee of the task force. I sit on the Lucas County Sexual Assault Response Team. Um yeah, so there you go.
SPEAKER_00Um well, you clearly need to update your LinkedIn because I didn't see half of that, and I'm now even more impressed and more amazed that you managed to get it all done. But I have to say, I know we at Boyklaw we are so happy and proud to have you be on our team and with your all of your amazing skills and experience help to evaluate some cases and uh really I know you make a tremendous difference here.
SPEAKER_02I love my job here. I've been here for about four and a half years. I love the staff, I love Chuck. All of our attorneys are great and they all have a lot of heart and they take good care of their clients. So it's been a great experience to work here.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm very glad to hear that, and uh not that uh any of them need the ego boost, but we'll let them know because I'm sure they everyone would be delighted. So, Julie, can you tell me as you've listed off all the these these things that you do, these passion areas that you clearly have, what motivated you to become a nurse, first of all?
SPEAKER_02Uh I remember riding in the car with my mom when I was about 12, and we were talking about careers. Um I came from a family of teachers and um public service workers. And my mom had was a teacher for 25 years and then was a real estate appraiser for about 20 years. And my dad worked for the city of Paulding and City of Defiance for years. So there was no one medical in my family. But my mom said I would be a good nurse uh just because she she knew me, you know, she knew I loved the sciences and she knew my heart. So that's kind of thought, um, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Wow, and then yeah, so from then on everything just kind of went that direction.
SPEAKER_00So amazing. So there clearly it sounds like there's a uh there's a history of service and public service in your family. So you became a nurse. Can you walk me through how we got to all of these other jobs that you've accumulated? You know, some people have hobbies. I think your hobby is getting more jobs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, my hobby is kind of working. I I like to work. Um I came from a very hardworking background. Obviously, my parents have always been hard workers and I had great work at work ethic. But every job that I've gotten has come from somewhere else, from someone else. You should do that. Okay. You know, so I started out as an LPN years ago working in long-term care, and somebody said you should go back and get your errands. So I did that. And then I worked in Detroit and a couple other places and got turned on for a job one time just because I didn't have my bachelor's. So that made me mad. So I went back and got my bachelor's. And yeah, so I worked in a hospital. Um, and somebody said you should come work in the catf. So I did that. Somebody said you should co-work in ICU, so I did that. So and it so everything just kind of uh kind of piggybacked off each other when I was working. Then I started working in the ER and I made friends with uh one of the physicians in the ER who was the medical director for a flight company, medical flight company. So he said you should come fly for us. So I did um patient transport for flying for about three years for a company out of Ipsalini, Michigan. Um, and then one of my ER docs also worked for the government for disaster medical assistance team.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02So I worked for them for the government for three years doing disaster medication disaster nursing.
SPEAKER_00You were going out to disaster scenes where you didn't need medical teaching. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02Similarly, there's a lot of my colleagues that are deployed now for the coronavirus issues. Um, so and also to the hurricane areas that where their medical systems are dilapidated due to infrastructure collapse.
SPEAKER_00Sure, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02So we would go to places wherever they needed assistance and provide medical care. We'd pop up our tents and um do all well everything a normal hospital would do on the fly.
SPEAKER_00My goodness.
SPEAKER_02So um so through those experiences all kind of brought me a lot of different experience and working ER kind of drove me in those different areas. Then it drove me to be a forensic nurse.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02And do being a forensic nurse made me love the law.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02And then because of that, uh, University of Toledo has a nurse paralegal program that's not very well known. And so I got my degree from the University of Toledo as a nurse paralegal. Got it, which is a um a post-bachelor's certificate.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02So it's only three semesters, it was relatively quick, but it made me love the law even more.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02And I did my internship here for that here at Boyk, and I've been here ever since.
SPEAKER_00I see. That makes a ton of sense. Uh Julie, can you tell me what exactly is a forensic nurse?
SPEAKER_02So there's different areas of forensic nursing, but my specific area of forensic nursing is if a patient presents to the emergency department or the hospital or any of our clinics with some kind of interpersonal violence, our nurses see those patients. They do the medical evidence collection. We make sure the patient gets all the medical treatment that they need. We hook them up with any of the outside resources that need to happen, or the internal resources within the hospital system, like social work or the chaplain or whatever else that they need, and make sure all this, all the things that would they would need for prosecution are done appropriately so that the prosecutor can effectively prosecute the case, make sure the patient's medical needs are met, and make sure their psychosocial needs are met as well.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So, up to up to this point, just to you know, just to make sure I'm following, we have nurse. Um, you ran through a number of very intense areas at the hospital, then you also became a flight nurse, then a disaster nurse, and then a nurse paralegal. Correct. And so that brings us up to how you met all these crazy cats here at Boy Claw.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I also know that you have become an educator as well.
SPEAKER_02Right. So my my full-time job at the hospital that I work for is a nurse educator. I'm responsible for six units at my hospital. And I'm not responsible for the patients, I'm responsible for the nurses. Okay. So I have to make sure that the nurses are competent in all of their areas of nursing. So I have six units that I have nurses that I monitor and make sure that all of their needs are met. And if they have new equipment or any of those kinds of things that they need educated on, that's my job.
SPEAKER_01Got it.
SPEAKER_02We also are responsible for bringing in new emplo new employees, new nurses, and new nursing assistants and making sure that they know what they are supposed to do and are successful when they hit the floor to take care of patients safely.
SPEAKER_00That's such a critical need, clearly, and something I would I had no idea existed. Right. So thank you very much for for doing that. Uh all any time that I've been in the in the hospital, I didn't realize that uh I've had you to you to thank or people like you to kind of in the background, making sure things go the way they're supposed to go. Very important in a hospital uh with the with the nursing staff. So, in addition to all of these things, then you decided you started a consulting business on top of that.
SPEAKER_02Sure. That and that kind of fell out of my forensic nurse uh career. Um, there's been a couple times that people have asked me to be experts on cases, just kind of informally, and then I met a mentor who lives in the Dayton area who said, you know, you really should charge for this. Uh I said, Oh, oh, I didn't even know that was a thing. Okay. So um it's it's all kind of fallen out of that. And so now I do expert witness testimony for mostly strangulation, but domestic violence and sexual assault as well.
SPEAKER_00That has to be so important for those cases to be able to interpret what what we're truly seeing and what has truly happened to the victim.
SPEAKER_02Really no different than my nurse educator job. So my job as an expert is to educate the jury as what the standard of care is, why we think this is or is not, you know, what we what the prosecutor is saying it is or it isn't, um, and what what leads us to those decision making uh uh processes. Got it. So what kind of walking the jury through from start to finish what happened with this patient and why I feel or don't feel that this was an issue. Right.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That makes uh a lot of sense. So where does karate fit into all of this?
SPEAKER_02So uh I have a daughter who is on the smaller side of stature, and when she was in eighth grade, uh, and I was working in the emergency department as well, and I'm not a giant person either, um, we decided that we needed a little self-defense training and some good blocking training.
SPEAKER_01Got it.
SPEAKER_02So we decided as a family that we were gonna start doing karate. So my son and my daughter and I all started karate. And so in the course of the last sixteen years, I'm now a fourth degree black belt in American Kempo.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02And I yeah. So so it's come in really handy in the emergency department. Oh really? That was actually gonna be my follow-up question. Is like have you actually had to use it? Oh, it's not um offensive, it's purely defensive to make sure patients don't hit you or do anything like that. And that I mean that happens in the ER, so more than people know.
SPEAKER_00Right. So and you know, having the ability to help to de-escalate a situation has to be very handy.
SPEAKER_02And a big part of uh of especially Kempo karate is the mindset of karate and making sure that you are fair and just and doing things appropriately, not just for the m you know, the purely physical part of karate, but the mental part of karate as well. And um, it was a great outlet for me for for my own mind and body, as well as you know, having the the career effects as well, benefit.
SPEAKER_00It's interesting you you mentioned the the mental aspects of karate because a pattern starts to emerge when we start looking at all of these various aspects of your career. Whatever you touch, it seems that you have a a natural inclination to want to make things better.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I think that's why I like my job here is that I get to look at the whole picture of a client, not just their cardiology visits or not just their OB visits or not just their car accident. We're looking at the whole lifespan of the client, that they have prior issues that related to what what happened to them and the issue that they're seeing us for and be able to put all of that together.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Let's dive a little bit deeper into that. When you talk about a nurse paralegal, and you mentioned that you're helping to review cases and really help to kind of maybe navigate the some of the medical pieces that others may not be so aware of. Can you just walk me through what typically does a nurse paralegal do? And then what specifically do you do here at the firm?
SPEAKER_02So a nurse paralegal can take a few different roles, but my role here at Boyk is I am presented with all the medical records from the client. I initially go do kind of a cursory dive through those medical records and see if we're missing any records because a lot of times, you know, either clients forget about providers that they've seen or things that have happened to them in the past, or they have treatment that they've had after that relates to previous injuries or previous medical conditions that maybe they don't realize relate, but you know, may have a bearing on their case. So then I kind of put all of that together for our attorneys and say, yes, this is what I think. No, I don't think this p client has a case, or yes, I do think the client has a case, you know, and making sure that we have a clear picture of exactly what happened medically with the with the client. Sometimes also that includes helping direct some care. So if we have a client who's seen this doctor and seen this doctor and seen this specialty and isn't getting what they need, well, have we thought about seeing pain management? Have we thought about seeing chiropractic? Have we thought about massage? Have we thought about other things and then kind of help the client direct to maybe better ways of treatment pathways that they may not have thought of or their provider hadn't thought of?
SPEAKER_00Well, that it's funny. You uh you you you stole my question, which was going to be what is the benefit to what it potentially would be the benefit to a client to have a nurse paralegal on staff at the firm and you've you've already answered it. Not only are you going to be able to help identify any areas where there may be issues, try to help the legal staff make sure that they have all the documentation in place, but also potentially help a patient get better care.
SPEAKER_02Right, exactly. So maybe there's some area that they're missing or you know, something that could could be done better, or you know, they could see someone else that may have they have may have a better outcome.
SPEAKER_00Sure. And with all with all of your experience, I'm sure you're able to look at a case from a much more holistic way and see, oh, there are there could be other things at play here. So I'm fascinated by that. And I'm very, very grateful for honestly for our client's sake that you are here and uh you're doing such an amazing, amazing job. Uh one thing that I do know that we wanted to we chat about is you meant you had mentioned that with workers' compensation cases, there are oftentimes things that people can do to improve the the success of their case down the road that most people don't know to do. Can you talk a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Cynthia, who's our workers' compensation queen here, who's amazing, and I've learned a ton from her. Uh she's the one who does most of our workers' compensation cases. And we were having some issues with billing because clients would come in and they had been to multiple providers, and because of the billing codes that the physicians would bill under, they would be denied those bills would be denied under workers' compensation because they weren't some of the allowed conditions that were approved by the Bureau of Workers Comp. So we've uh started kind of giving the client a form letter at the beginning to say, you know, make sure you do this, make sure you do that, just kind of a checklist to make sure they're doing things correctly and so that they get the best out of their case. And also we're encouraging them to carry a list of their approved diagnoses in their wallet or in their purse. That way, if they go see a medical provider, they can say, hey, this is my list of approved diagnoses, because there may be a diagnosis for back pain that's one code, or it might be three different codes, depending on how that provider perceives the problem.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So we want to make sure that they that they would uh bill under that correct code so that it gets covered by workers' compensation and we don't have to appeal it or fight with the bureau later.
SPEAKER_00I think that's something you know we oftentimes say to clients if you think you have an issue or you may you you think that there's something has happened to you that you might need legal assistance with, call as soon as possible. Right. And I think it's for it a lot of it is around issues like this where we can say you do have a case in a little while, get through your treatment, but also make sure that your treatment is actually following the correct pathways.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And it's it's a way for the client to be proactive for themselves, to make sure those those bills are covered appropriately. It helps our paralegals on the back end so we don't have to argue with the providers about changing billing codes and making sure things get done so that they are covered, just makes it easier on the back end for both parties.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell That makes sense of sense. And I had I did not realize that was uh that was something that we did and we had that expertise.
SPEAKER_02And it all fell out of problems. So I initially when I started here, they handed me this giant folder of bills that I had to go back and fight. And it was more about that I had to then go through each office visit and try and find the documentation as to why those patients had presented for that office visit and make sure that it fell within their allowed diagnoses. If we can do that on the front end as opposed to on the back end, it makes complete sense and it's easier for the for the clinic, it's easier for the pick the client, and it's easier for us.
SPEAKER_00And it might honestly make sure that they get better treatment. True. They might actually be getting the right thing that they need, not the sort of right thing.
SPEAKER_02It's possible. Absolutely. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Wow. You know, all of this is making my head swim almost as if I've had a glass of wine.
SPEAKER_02What a great segue.
SPEAKER_00So, Julia, not only are you a nurse, a nurse paralegal, a disaster nurse, a former flight nurse, and a forensic nurse and a a nurse paralegal, you're also the owner of a winery.
SPEAKER_02Yes. My husband and I own Benfield Wines in Swanton. We've been licensed for five years. We've been making wine for about 16. Wow. And I say we, but my husband makes all the wine. Okay. My husband was in the Navy for nine years and got out of the Navy and decided he wanted to be an airplane mechanic. So he went to airplane mechanic school and was an airplane mechanic mechanic for years. We moved from uh Detroit, Michigan, out to New England for me to help start an angioplasty program. I got recruited out there uh in 2002. Okay. And so we were out there for a few years and we fell in love with wine because there's tons of little wineries all over New England. Yes. So it was kind of our hobby. And so when we moved back here to Ohio, there was not any wineries. There was one.
SPEAKER_01Oh goodness.
SPEAKER_02So my husband started making wine. Um, and it was a hobby that kind of blossomed into making wine for me, then making wine for friends and family, then making wine for a couple of weddings. Uh, he initially at first didn't think his wine was good enough to sell. Sure. And then we had a couple of weddings that we did wine for, including our son's wedding, and people were asking where they could buy it. So finally, someone besides me was telling him that it was good.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Always takes that third party.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm I'm not good enough. So he then started getting licensed, and it's it's a long process and it's a lot of work and it's a lot of rules and a lot of laws.
SPEAKER_01I can imagine.
SPEAKER_02So we started out of our house. We got our our um our own property licensed as a winery. We started with 400 square feet in our house. Now we have a 9,000 square foot building in Swanton.
SPEAKER_00Good Lord.
SPEAKER_02So that's awesome. Yeah, it's a beautiful old building. It was built in 1896. It was the Pilead Opera House initially when it was built. Oh. So the downstairs has two long storefronts. One side is our office and our gift shop, and the other side is our winery, which includes our tasting room. And then the upstairs is one big 4,000 square foot open room.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02That currently doesn't have electricity, but that's the 10-year plan. So but it was the Pilliot Opera House. And there was a stage in one end of it until we think about 1920 when the tornado hit and took part of the building down.
SPEAKER_00Got it.
SPEAKER_02Then it was an indoor golf course. What? And it was a bowling alley. Okay. And then it was a basketball court. And the baskets are still hanging up there.
SPEAKER_00Get out of here. First of all, I've never heard of an indoor golf course.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I hadn't either. But we got the fire maps and a bunch of advertising all the way back through the eight uh late 1800s to see all the things that the that the building had been. So there's lots and lots of history in that building, and it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00That is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02So our goal eventually is to turn the upstairs into a banquet hall. Makes sense. It has uh eighteen foot high ceilings and the structure is absolutely beautiful. It just needs a lot of love.
SPEAKER_00So Well, I'm really glad that that building has you because uh a lot of those buildings that need a lot of love oftentimes don't get it.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. The structure of the building is great. The bones are beautiful and so we'll We'll give it the love that it needs.
SPEAKER_00I'm very glad to hear that. So Julia, I'm hoping you can help me understand something. When I think of a winery, I picture rolling hills with grapevines clinging to the hillside. Right. And that's not necessarily the case, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's lots of urban wineries that people don't realize, um, especially in the area that we live in, because there's lots of agriculture around us. So you you do have that picture of people stomping grapes in a bucket and going out in between the vines. But there's uh a kind of a little known secret in the winery world that most wineries do get juice from a third party in the background to support the supply that they need. So while we don't have our own vineyards, we get all of our juice from California and we make all the wine in Swanton. So we get the raw juice from California that gets shipped to us, and then we turn it into wine.
SPEAKER_00So it it's Swanton wine with California roots.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. I had no idea. Yeah. So what uh what is your favorite wine?
SPEAKER_02Uh we have a Riesling that's dry that I absolutely love. Um, my husband, I would say my husband makes wine as a labor of love for me. Uh-oh. So nothing is super dry and nothing is super sweet, but we have the full gamut from dry to sweet. So our Riesling is my favorite.
SPEAKER_00Well, considering all that you do, I can imagine that every now and again you really just need a good glass of wine.
SPEAKER_02Well, the winery is actually fun. It's a lot of work and it's his full-time job. Now he's been doing that for three years, I think, as a full full-time ventner. But uh, so I run all the marketing and all the the customer service and all the events that we do. Right. In fact, tonight we have a painting class, you know, those kinds of things. And we have music this weekend. So, you know, it's I do all the event planning and all of those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's and it must be it must be so wonderful to be able to provide those types of connections and that type of kind of normalcy for the community in Swanton because we know there's been so much disruption this year.
SPEAKER_02We've been very grateful and very thankful for our community. Um, when we first moved to Swanton, we moved to Swanton with the idea to open the winery. And the current mayor, who was not the mayor at the time, but he was the president of the Chamber of Commerce, reached out to us and got us very involved in the community, which is how I ended up on the Chamber of Commerce. We've now formed our own small business organization downtown. Uh, we all work together to cross promote each other. All of the business almost all of the businesses are women-owned. Um, so we all interesting that's awesome. We were just on 13 ABC maybe a month and a half ago, two months ago, talking about all the women-owned businesses in Swanton and how we're all working together to cross-promote each other in a time where it is hard to promote yourself as a small business with corona.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02And the limitations that the state has put on us. And rightfully so. Rightfully so.
SPEAKER_00Certainly for you in your in your with your background in in health and uh in disaster, having full appreciation for the magnitude of what's happening, but also wanting to be able to provide safe ways that people can get out and do things. Get out and do something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, everyone's tired of being s stuck at home. So we did a big event downtown for Halloween. Uh, we had a costume contest, we had all the shop owners had candy, we had a clown doing balloons, we had music. Um, we're kind of doing the same thing for Small Business Saturday, which is coming up on November 28th, where all the businesses are working together. Uh, we have a food truck coming, you know, all of those kinds of things. So Swanton's really blooming. All the vendors are really working hard together to cross-promote each other and make that happen and you know, bring people into downtown.
SPEAKER_00Well, all I can say is that Swanton is lucky to have you. Boyklaw is lucky to have you. Everyone who knows you is grateful to know you. And I certainly am very delighted to have had the opportunity to get to chat with you today and also to get to know you a little bit better. And I know what's rising to the top of my list is a paint, one of your is it like a wine and painting class?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's kind of like a sip and sip and paint. So we do all kinds of fun events.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've got to get out to I've got to get out to the winery really soon. And what just uh just so people know, how uh how can they find you?
SPEAKER_02So Benfield Wines has a Facebook page, we have an Instagram, we have a website, benfieldwines.com. All of our events are on there.
SPEAKER_00So that's B-E-N-E.
SPEAKER_02Nope, B-E-N-F, as in Fox, I E L D. Benfield.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, Julia, thank you so much for for coming on the hotcast. Thanks very much for sharing all that you do, and frankly, thank you for doing all that you do.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for joining us on the Boik Brief. Tune in next time to hear more stories of law and life.