Their mission, if they chose to accept it, was to race through the streets of Glasgow in the pouring rain, meeting with secret agents, cracking clues and generally having a great time in the name of team-building. More than 40 lawyers pitted their wits against each other last month in the firm’s spy hunt challenge. So, who were the Daniel Craigs and who were the Daniel O’Donnells on the day?

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As Jason Bourne will tell you – or he would if he wasn’t so much the silent type- spying is a dangerous business. True, it isn’t all dodging bullets, sipping martinis or roaring to Monte Carlo in your Aston Martin. But equally, it isn’t all David Shayler, Peter Wright moaning on about pension rights, or Diana’s car crash. A particular skillset is required to stay under the radar and execute government business in hostile territory. Think thallium, polonium 210 and poison tipped umbrellas. Counterintelligence, patience and intellect. Think Spymaster.

Glasgow city centre isn’t the old eastern bloc or Eastern Poland, (they may be part of the EU, but the CIA are very busy out there these days) but it did double as the live training arena for the Spyhunt event hosted by Spymaster, a business training consultancy who use undercover techniques as part of teambuilding training exercises. On the auspicious confluence of the 29 February, 9 teams of legal specialists swapped their quill pens for poison darts, their mobile phones for spycams, and their legal briefs for gadget filled briefcases, and embarked on a secret mission in a race against time, the weather, and their eight opponents. Their mission; complete a series of coded challenges, racing from location to location, unscrambling the clues, using their wits, brains, guile, gadgets and cunning. If you were in the city that day, and if you looked carefully, you may have spotted some unusual activity going on under your nose. Secret meetings, covert liaisons with agents and double agents in disguise, map reading and sneaky photography, huddling in doorways listening to taped instructions; hiding in plain sight. It needed nerves of steels, bags of grit, a stiff upper lip and an even stiffer brolly. But who, in the end, would emerge triumphant?

Teams from the legal fraternity slipped into disguise to find out. The Goldfingers of HBJ Gately Wareing, the Scaramangas from Tods Murray, Kerr Brown’s Octopussies, the Pussy Galores of Miller Samuel, Stirling Park’s aptly named Moneypennies, Morton Fraser’s Dr Nos, Strathclyde Law Clinic’s Moonrakers and Oddjobs, all joined the ‘Jaws’ of The Firm team to challenge for the title of Spymasters.

“Is it a game, or is it real?” asks the Spyhunt Challenge. Hard to tell, as the teams assembled for their debriefing from Spymaster’s Agent 75, in the Millennium Hotel, where they were also given their briefcase of instructions, and tools as gadget-laden as anything that Q-branch could muster. What, we wondered, would we need this pistol for? The Polaroid camera, coded instructions and cunning disguise seemed equally intriguing, but the secret pin number allowed us to log on and receive our first mission instructions.

The mission before the teams would require multi-tasking of the stealthiest and most coordinated kind.

On a two hour time limit, the task ahead seemed daunting. The fuse was lit –metaphorically- as soon as each team logged on to the dedicated command site, and would not stop again until the mission was completed. Task 1 was to liaise with our contact in George Square, who would cunningly be disguised in a high visibility jacket and hardhat. We would only be acknowledged if we used the code-phrase “Bob, can you fix it?”, and if we were carrying a copy of The Sun newspaper. Swallowing our solidarity to the people of Liverpool in the name of corporate bonding (Liverpool, forgive us?), we forged ahead, and of you remember Indiana Jones in the marketplace, confronted with dozens of identical basket bearers, you may begin to appreciate just how many hardhatted, high-vis jacket wearing men already carrying a copy of the Sun you are likely to find on the average afternoon in George Square.

The Firm’s editor, Richard Draycott, took the plunge, approaching a likely looking suspect, but failed to avoid being snapped by a rival team member in the act of making contact.

One of the rules of the Spyhunt challenge is that bonus time is added or deducted for every time you catch a member of the opposing time in the act of making a rendezvous with their contact. A few eyebrows were raised on the city streets that day as rival teams crisscrossed one another en route to or departing from their secret meetings, cameras raised in hot pursuit that would make a paparazzo blush. Commitment was definitely not lacking.

Being a spy takes a certain amount of guile, agent 75 had told us. Some cojones, nerve, or as a Glaswegian might put it, a brass neck. In addition to following the trail of clues that sent each team criss-crossing the city, on the way they each had to try to secure a few bonus objectives. A group photograph with a stranger was one, and the Firm’s effort to secure this from a Canadian was met with some defensive scepticism. We tried to double up on another bonus task – to obtain a foreign business card- but asking if our Canadian subject was American caused him to recoil in fear. Did he think we were planning an assassination attempt or just some very modern yank-bashing? Ultimately, the jolly fellow obliged, although we are unsure what impression we conveyed about Scottish hospitality.

The elements conspired against the teams for phase 2, involving some decoding and use of landmarks that would make Dan Brown and Leonarda Da Vinci proud. Or ashamed. The lions of George Square were the starting point. Compasses were oriented north, and the statues, weathervanes, signage and lie of the land were scrutineeered for hidden clues, and decoded to unravel the secret message within. All against driven rain that howled so hard, even an aquatic Lotus would have been insufficient. Only the hardiest braved on, with some covert assistance from a helpful double agent. Mystery benefactor, whoever you are, we thank you.

The female contingent from Kerr Brown put women’s lib straight back into the 1970s by declaring that the weather was too much for their delicate constitutions, and they promptly nipped into the pub for a vodka martini and irn-bru. The result was that with a 2-man handicap, Kerr Brown’s Octopussies earned the wooden spoon. With one team (unknowingly, at this stage) out of the running, the remaining eyes were fixed squarely on the prize.

So where would teams find a champagne cork to photograph? And would anyone gain 5 bonus minutes by photographing themselves re-enacting a scene from a Bond film? The temptation to slip to the pub was waved before everyone, as 5 bonus minutes were also available for any team who snapped themselves in a hostelry holding a drink, although those 5 minutes could easily be lost if the team hung around too long to actually neck it. The Firm team disciplined themselves, and stuck to water, we hasten to add. Snaps of the flag of St George, someone walking their dog, and –most challenging of all- a team member on horseback (difficult, in Glasgow city centre) were still to be obtained. Stiff tests for even the brassiest of necks.

With a half hour extension granted by agent 75, the race to the finish proved to be tight. As we converged on the final objective, encounters with rival spy teams became more frequent as the finishing straight neared. Entering a lift for what proved to be the final task, we encountered Morton Fraser’s Dr Nos on the way out. Would they pip us to the post? All would be decided in the final reckoning, as we reconvened at the Millennium for a debriefing, a well earned cocktail, and the tallying up of the scores.

Overall winners did indeed prove to be the slick and efficient Morton Fraser team of Ewan McGillvray, Bobby Reid, Nicola Scandrett, Kirsty Neilson and Marie Louise Lang. Unavoidably the wetter, but hopefully better Bond-ed at the end than they were at the start. Completing the mission in the shortest time and gaining maximum points by obtaining all available bonuses, they are clearly made of 00 material.

As for The Firm team, we placed fifth overall, and won’t be resigning form publishing to enter into espionage anytime soon. Or will we? Look behind you…..

Our thanks to Spymasters, particularly Eddie Gilmour, for organising the Spy Hunt event. For more information on Spymasters visit www.spymasters.org