Despite former university lawyer Rob Kent and former acting general counsel Kristine Zayko publicly resigning more than five years ago, emails between university officials and two consulting firms obtained by The State News show that both lawyers have returned to the university — Kent as an interim head of investigations and Title IX and Title VI compliance and Zayko as an investigator for MSU’s Office for Civil Rights.

University spokesperson Emily Guerrant defended Kent and Zayko’s roles at MSU, saying that "having a law or legal background is not prohibitive to working in the Title IX space."

While it's not uncommon for universities to hire outside consultants to investigate civil rights complaints, a process that is supposed to be independent of the institution, it’s "unusual" for those investigators to be attorneys who formerly represented MSU, said Liz Abdnour, a Title IX attorney.

It’s not the first time Kent has held a leadership role in MSU’s Title IX office. He was appointed to temporarily head the office in 2018, a move that drew criticism from advocates who argued the move could discourage people from reporting sexual assault. However, Abdnour said his most recent role is unlikely to attract a similar level of scrutiny from students, most of whom did not attend MSU during his previous tenure.

"The people that knew or were worried about Rob Kent in 2017, 2018 — most of those people aren’t on campus anymore, at least students," Abdnour said. "I would imagine there probably isn’t that (same) level of concern."

Zayko's work investigating discrimination reports could similarly avoid ruffling feathers given that she is no longer in the role of providing legal advice to the university and the limited scope of her current work, Abdnour said. 

Kent and Zayko did not respond to requests for comment.

After leaving MSU in 2020 for consulting firm INCompliance, Kent, the school’s former assistant general counsel, returned to the university as a consultant in July 2024, according to an agreement between the firm and MSU. He currently heads the team in charge of investigating discrimination and harassment reports and coordinates MSU’s compliance with Title IX and VI.

INCompliance, a subsidiary of law firm Bricker Graydon, has been providing Title IX and other investigative services for MSU since July 2018, according to Guerrant.

Invoices for September 2024 and January 2025 show MSU was billed $92,160 for work done by Kent. INCompliance also paid Kent an unspecified share of $153,400.50 for work during November 2024 that was split by Kent, another INCompliance senior consultant and a paralegal.

During Kent’s nearly two-year-long tenure atop MSU’s Title IX and civil rights office, Title IX investigations took longer to investigate. In one instance, an investigation into a student’s complaint against a professor, issuing of a final report and subsequent denial of her appeal took 582 days from start to end. That delay spurred an ongoing U.S. Department of Education investigation into the university’s Title IX compliance.

Much of the controversy surrounding Kent’s appointment to head the office in 2018, Abdnour said, was inspired by concerns that his priorities would be clouded by his tenure in the general counsel’s office.

"What people were worried about was that he was coming from this place where they had a different set of goals," Abdnour said. "And that he would not be someone who could get out of ‘being’ in the university. He only ever worked in the general counsel’s office, so all of his relationships were at the general counsel’s office."

After resigning from MSU in May 2018, Zayko, now a senior consultant at law firm Husch Blackwell, has been investigating reports of discrimination and sexual misconduct for the Office for Civil Rights since at least Feb. 10, 2025, emails between her and an official in the office show. 

Zayko and other Husch Blackwell staff have served as independent investigators to review, investigate and resolve reports of discrimination, including sexual harassment and assault, filed against MSU Health Care staff, according to Guerrant. The firm has worked for MSU to that end since October 2019.

In one email, Zayko informed Vice President and Title IX Coordinator Laura Rugless that Husch Blackwell would be increasing its rate for senior counsels to $425 an hour. It’s unclear how long Zayko has worked at MSU as an outside consultant or how much she’s earned during that time.

Zayko was appointed acting general counsel in 2018 by then-Interim President John Engler, but resigned less than three months later amid criticism for not telling the board about a 2014 investigation into Nassar and a 2005 complaint against Nassar’s former supervisor. 

Before her promotion to acting general counsel, Zayko edited several final reports of Title IX investigations to enhance MSU’s defense strategy in preparation for a potential barrage of civil lawsuits. That practice, Abdnour said, represented an unnecessary mixing of Title IX investigation and general counsel work.

"If you’ve got an attorney in your general counsel office who is so good at editing and putting additional legal support into this stuff, great — move that person over (to Title IX)," Abdnour said. 

More than five years in private practice now separate Kent and Zayko from their time as university lawyers. Since joining their respective firms, Abdnour said, the two have likely been contracted by several other institutions to conduct Title IX investigations and have picked up relevant experience for working in Title IX affairs. It’s possible Kent and Zayko have successfully shed the "mindsets" that characterized their work at MSU, she added.

At the same time, Abdnour said, it’s difficult to ignore an MSU hiring culture that values personal relationships, a culture she described as "not extremely ethics-based, and not extremely merit-based." Zayko and Kent haven’t worked at MSU for years, but they likely still have personal relationships with some former colleagues — relationships that could potentially influence their work, she added.

"It could be fine," Abdnour said about the sanctity of their roles. "I don’t know."