Linklaters believes in constantly developing and challenging its employees. Dara Leonard explains the ethos behind the firm's training

Legal Week Intelligence's most recent Employee Satisfaction Survey found that the single biggest reason given by assistants and associates for joining the legal profession was the intellectual challenge – cited by one in four of respondents. Unfortunately, training programmes, lectures and seminars often fail to fully engage or challenge their target audience.

In response to this, Linklaters has created a global curriculum for legal and skills development, with various programmes to assist associates at key career stages. In designing programmes to develop key business skills, we have looked closely at how we help our lawyers learn in areas such as people or client relationship-management, where often there is no clear solution to a given problem.