About Mara Elena
Mara Elena Kent took an unusual route into the law. She completed an undergraduate degree in industrial design at the University of Michigan in 1988 and later earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in 1996. The two degrees mark a shift from design-minded problem solving to the more formal reasoning demanded by legal work.
Her first post-graduate legal role was a judicial clerkship. In 1996 she served as a law clerk to Justice Michael F. Cavanagh of the Michigan Supreme Court. That year in the court chambers offered early exposure to appellate practice and judicial decision-making. A couple of years later she joined Stein Moran Raimi & Goethal in 1998, entering private practice and handling matters outside the academic setting.
In 2000 Kent moved into academia. She joined the faculty of Thomas M. Cooley School of Law and later held the rank of full professor with tenure. Her time on the faculty placed her in classrooms and in faculty governance. She balanced teaching responsibilities with scholarship and mentoring law students during a period when the law school expanded its programs and course offerings.
Kent returned to private practice and to running a small firm. She established Mara Kent Law in 2014 and was listed as counsel at Bassett Law in 2015. In 2018 she was associated with NSSSB and in 2022 she took a position at Ferguson Widmayer & Clark, PC. Across those roles she has moved between solo practice, firm life and institutional legal work, carrying practical courtroom experience alongside years of teaching.
Her professional affiliations include membership in the State Bar of Michigan beginning in the late 1990s and continuing to the present. That membership thread runs through her clerkship, academic career and subsequent legal practice. The record shows a practitioner who has spent decades inside Michigan’s legal community in several capacities.
Kent’s background combines courtroom exposure, law school teaching and the management of a small practice. She has occupied roles in the judiciary, in law firms and in legal education, and she has shifted between them over the course of three decades. She currently practices at Ferguson Widmayer & Clark, PC, where her work concentrates on advising clients and representing them in court.
