President Leeha James
Leeha embodies the qualities of a truly selfless leader. Between managing her own firm, publishing papers, delivering presentations, and being involved in other non-profit organisations, Leeha tirelessly gives up her time to lead the BCLS Team.
Leeha’s immense contribution to BCLS over the last three years has been central to all we have achieved. As a leader, she has helped take BCLS through a period of incredible growth and change.
Vice President Kate Fuller
Kate Fuller is a lawyer, a feminist and a hard core Fall Out Boy fan. She is a practising criminal lawyer, who also has extensive experience in domestic violence and child protection law. Some would consider that she has been appearing in the Cleveland and Wynnum Magistrates Court so long that her name should probably appear on the asset register.
In 2016, Kate became a founding partner of Fuller & White Solicitors where she remained until 2021. The highlight of her career has been instructing on murder trials and successfully running appeals. Kate is passionate about access to justice and court advocacy.
Kate has worked with the Bayside Community Legal Service since 2014 as both a volunteer and committee member. In 2020, she became Vice President and is thrilled to continue working with our employees, volunteers, and committee members.
Treasurer Paul Coves
Secretary Mandy Reardon
Mandy was formerly a nationally accredited mediator and practice manager of a boutique legal firm, whilst working in her role in a trustee organisation representing financially vulnerable members of the community, which led her to join the BCLS Management Committee.
Mandy’s involvement at BCLS has been vital over the last couple of years. She coordinated the documents for the centre’s compliance accreditation in 2020, updated the BCLS constitution and prepared numerous grant applications.
General Member Farley Tolpen
Farley S. Tolpen is the founder and CEO of The Mediation Experts. Farley is a mediator and lawyer with over 30 years’ experience mediating, arbitrating and litigating. Farley is dual-qualified in both Australia and the United States and a member of the California State Bar and Queensland Law Society. He is also a registered National Mediator and certified Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner with over 3000 mediations to his credit. Farley believes in the real-world efficiencies and effectiveness of mediation and has a 90% success rate in resolving disputes/conflict.
General Member Marshall Bostock
Besides being a volunteer lawyer at BCLS advising clients on criminal and family law matters, Marshall also sits on the management committee at BCLS and assists with the overall governance. Marshall considers himself very lucky and strives to give back to help those who have not been as fortunate as himself.
General Member David Boca
Meet David Boca. David operates a boutique accountancy and tax practice in Manly. David has also worked in privately-held and ASX listed enterprises in senior finance positions so his commercial understanding of how business operates from a financial perspective underpins his recommendations and advice on all matters of business and tax.
David started working with BCLS in December 2019 as the accountant and joined the management team in 2021. David decided to dedicate his time and volunteer his services as the accountant for BCLS and also joined the management committee as he values the work BCLS carries out in the general public. If he can make even a small difference to the local community by contributing to the work performed by the team at BCLS. His mission is to add value to the business and is driven by positive results and outcomes.
General Member Peter Goodwin
Peter has over 40 years experience first as a Solicitor ( 6 years) then as a Barrister particularly in the areas of Criminal Law, Personal Injuries ,Wills and Estates and in all general litigation. After 40 plus years in the legal profession Peter decided it was high time he started to put something back into the community and so volunteered with BCLS.
General Member Natasha Shorter
General Member Vanessa Hernandez
Principal Solicitor Caitlin Downs
Legal Assistant Rebecca Smith
Rebecca is one of two legal assistants at Bayside. She is a 5th year Law/Arts (Political Science/International Relations) student at UQ and previously volunteered at Bayside until the end of 2020. Rebecca joined BCLS at the start of 2021. She is involved in the UQ law society as the 2021 Vice-President (Internal Competitions) and has participated in negotiation, client interviewing and mediation law competitions.
Legal Assistant Heidi Moc
Heidi is in her 4th year of a Law/Commerce degree at UQ. She started as a volunteer at BCLS in early 2021 before joining the team as a legal assistant in 2022. In the past Heidi has volunteered for Women’s Legal Service and Prisoner’s Legal Service and contributed to pro bono research projects.
Our Team in the Community
