Employees from the Boston law firm Sullivan & Worcester visit the Middletown YMCA to work on team building.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

MIDDLETOWN — “You’re an animal!” Benjamin Armour hollers to his buddy, Sean Masterson, who at this moment is wearing a helmet and a climber’s harness as he traverses a ropes course 42 feet up in the air.

Masterson and his partner on the ropes, Adriana Rojas, were shaky at first, nervousness showing on their faces. But they seemed to gain confidence as they completed each new aerial obstacle.

How many lawyers does it take to complete a ropes course?

In this case, just a couple — plus colleagues to cheer them on.

Young associates from the Boston commercial law firm Sullivan & Worcester tackled the ropes at the Newport County YMCA’s Outdoor Leadership Center on a warm afternoon last month. It was a team-building exercise for some of the firm’s newest lawyers.

The Sullivan & Worcester lawyers were the first corporate group to use the YMCA’s leadership center, says the Y’s executive director Peter Milinazzo.

The Y was awarded a $68,340 Champlin Foundation grant to pay for the high-ropes course and climbing wall, which took three weeks to construct.

Milinazzo said the course complements the Y’s other fitness options, particularly those for youth groups.

“Kids don’t want to do calisthenics,” he said. Instead, the ropes course is useful as an alternative to typical exercise and as a teaching tool in lessons of teamwork and respect.

After joking that they should rewrite the Y’s liability waiver themselves, the Boston lawyers got to work on a round of icebreakers, tight-rope walking and wall climbing.

“Play hard, play fair and play safe,” Michael F. Miller, the Y’s associate executive director, instructed the group.

Calling themselves “Monti’s Marauders,” after their gregarious boss Louis Monti, one team powered through the low tight-rope challenge with just a few wobbly knees and shaky arms.

Next, Chris Stevenson sat in a plastic tub as his teammates balanced as many plastic balls on his body as they could in one minute.

“You can’t breathe,” Rojas warned him, laughing, as the group covered Stevenson’s arms and folded legs with plastic balls.

Forget the impression of lawyers as cutthroat workaholics. If their ropes work is any indication, this group plays as hard as it works. (Many eschewed the climbing all together, even, preferring to save their energy for the planned sailboat ride and dinner in Newport afterward.)

“There’s a myth that lawyers are a competitive bunch,” says summer associate Richard Wang. “It’s really not true. We work with each other. Lawyers are definitely not as egotistical as people think. Even in law school, it’s not über-competitive.”

The ropes courses helped the group better connect with and trust each other, the lawyers said.

“We do rely on each other a lot,” Armour says. “There’s a lot of things we don’t know. Especially because we’re young and we don’t know everything, we have to ask lots of questions. We’re competitive, but not with each other.”

But don’t get Armour wrong.

“We still want to win,” he says.

mwims@projo.com