PATRICIA O’Brien Cotter is an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court. She won a non-partisan election to this post on November 7, 2000 and ran unopposed in 2008 to retain her seat for a new eight-year term.  
O’Brien Cotter received a BS in political science from Western Michigan University in 1972 and a JD from Notre Dame Law School in 1977.
O’Brien Cotter worked as a lawyer in South Bend, Indiana for six years before joining John Hoyt in Great Falls, Montana in 1984. Cotter and her husband started the firm Cotter & Cotter one year later.
From 1996 to 1998, O’Brien Cotter served as chair of Montana's lawyer representatives to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. In 1998, she was chosen as one of five Ninth Circuit lawyers to serve on the Executive Committee for the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference.
In 1992 and 1998, O’Brien Cotter received the Montana Trial Lawyers Association's Public Service Award, and Appellate Advocacy Award in 1999.
O’Brien Cotter’s paternal grandfather John  Joyce O’Brien was a native of Lisnagourneen, Co. Cork.
O’Brien and her husband Michael have two children, Jack and Kathleen.

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