Meet the team

CILEX head of publishing Mark Styles explains his focus on developing educational resources for CILEX members at all stages of their careers, his work with law firms and universities and his love of ‘desert rock’

What are your role and responsibilities?

 

I’m responsible for the development of all the materials and resources we produce to support those studying with CILEX. That includes everything from printed course books and interactive e-books to e-learning modules. My team also plays an important role in the development of new products and services designed to benefit CILEX members.

Tell us a bit more about your background? How did you come to work at CILEX?

Before publishing, I worked in finance. I knew I wanted to do something different but wasn’t sure what, so at the age of 30 I gave up my job and went travelling, hoping for some inspiration. When I came back, I applied for various jobs and was lucky enough to get a role in publishing.

I spent most of my early publishing career with John Wiley and Sons Ltd, a large US-based publisher of academic journals, textbooks, and professional publications. I commissioned new authors and worked with them to develop their ideas into books. By the time I left Wiley, I was managing its custom solutions business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which meant travelling all over the world – a fantastic experience.

I left after 14 years to see if I could hack it as publishing consultant, working for myself. It was during this time that I came across CILEX and after four years as a consultant, impressed by CILEX’s vision for publishing, I decided to make the move.

What is a typical day like for you?

I’m now putting into operation some of the strategic thinking we did last year about what we can do with existing products and what we can develop from them for other stakeholders and markets.

There really isn’t a typical day, I might be on a call with a training provider talking about how they can get the most from our course books and then go straight into a meeting about a new opportunity to work with a law firm partner. If I’m not in meetings, I might be conducting some research into new publishing technologies or investigating what other legal publishers are up to. It’s really varied, which is exactly what I like.

What are you working on at the moment?

We’re just finalising the course books for the professional stage of CPQ which will be published imminently. Following the success of our e-learning CPD offerings last year, we are developing these for 2023 and I’m in conversations with several universities about how we might adapt our CPQ course books for use on university degrees, an exciting development for us. I’m also talking with other institutions and law firms about how our content can be used to meet some of their requirements.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

We’re only a small team but we have some big ideas about what we want to do. Working together to refine these ideas gives me a lot of satisfaction. I really enjoy the product development process and engaging with product users to see what we can do to help them achieve their goals. It’s great when, after spending a long time creating a product, you talk to someone who’s using it and they tell you how it’s helped them.

What do you like to do away from your job to relax/have fun? 

I have two boys aged 10 and 7, so weekends are either spent ferrying them to and from football matches or trying (and most often failing) to exhaust them with long walks. We’re lucky enough to have the countryside on our doorstep and I appreciate getting out there after a week spent in front of the laptop.

I love music, particularly ‘desert rock’ from the 90s, and play the drums in a local band called Chickens of the Sea. I’m a big fan of live music and try to get to see as many bands as I can. I’m also quite a board game nerd and like to cook, especially Mexican food.