Mountaineering solicitors are a competitive lot, it would appear.

Since we started asking which solicitor has climbed the highest mountain, Obiter has been contacted by several readers, most notably Charles Hattersley, a partner at the Plymouth office of Foot Anstey Sargent.

He has beaten the 6,814 metres managed on Ama Dablam in Nepal by Surrey solicitors Robin Marriott and Mark Carr (see [2003] Gazette, 11 December, 9) on several occasions, the highlight (literally) being Camp 6 up the west ridge of Everest.

At 8,150 metres, it is a mere 700 metres short of the summit.

Here he is pictured in action.

However, Mr Carr is planning to make it to the top of Everest, so Mr Hattersley's undoubted joy at being the world's highest solicitor may not last for much longer.

We have also heard from Pratheepan Pathmanathan, a trainee set to qualify at Ealing Law Chambers in west London next month, who is shortly to climb Aconcagua in Argentina (apparently the world's highest trekking peak at 6,960 metres) and tells Obiter he may like to specialise in extreme sports law.

'Touching danger puts things into perspective,' he adds.

Presumably he's never appeared in front of a High Court master.

On the way up, he may pass coming the other way Cameron Caverhill, a partner at Exeter firm Michelmores, who is shortly to climb Aconcagua and raise money for the Devon Air Ambulance.

Temperatures drop to minus 20, he tells us, while winds can get up to 120mph.

We have even heard from Scotland and Alistair Duff, a sports law partner in the Edinburgh office of Henderson Boyd Jackson.

He recently went to Greenland as part of a team that ascended 13 summits, all above a somewhat more modest 2,400 metres, but in the space of just three weeks.

And to show that his mind is never far from work, he named one of the virgin peeks Mount HBJ - a move other law firms may wish to consider when they come to drawing up their 2004 marketing plans.