About me
Kathy LaFortune is a licensed psychologist and attorney in Oklahoma. She received her undergraduate degree from Duke University in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Cum Laude with Distinction. She then worked for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey before returning to Oklahoma where she received her J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Tulsa. She first worked as a Municipal Public Defender for the City of Tulsa, was a Carl Albert Fellow while working at Rader Treatment Center, Eastern State Hospital (now Oklahoma Forensic Center) as a staff forensic psychologist, David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center as mental health supervisor, Chief of Forensic Psychological Services at the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, Constituent Caseworker for Congressman Jim Bridenstine, Tulsa County Family Center for Juvenile Justice as a court psychologist, and then at the Tulsa County Public Defender Office providing consultation in the area of mental health and leading to the litigation filed in federal court (N.D. Oklahoma), Briggs v. Slatton-Hodges in 2023. She now works as a forensic psychologist for several tribes and federal court doing juvenile and adult competency and psychological evaluations.
She has taught at Rogers State, Tulsa Community College, Langston University, and teaches as an adjunct at the University of Tulsa in the Psychology Department and the College of Law, and taught in the Mental Disability Law program at New York Law School for five years. She also writes for the Judicial Notebook column for the APA Monitor and was recently a committee member for the APA Committee on Legal Issues (COLI). She has published articles in the Journal of Psychiatry and Law, Behavioral Science and the Law, ABA Journal of Family Law, and co-authored articles in Law and Human Behavior. She has served on the Department of Corrections board and on the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women, the OBA Mental Health Committee, Lawyers Helping Lawyers, Parkside Psychiatric Hospital and Clinic, Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, the Healthy Minds State Policy Council, and Oklahoma Appleseed. She is married to Tulsa County District Judge Bill LaFortune.
