"OK, PEOPLE! HERE WE GO!" says Ira Rosenstein, a partner in the New York-based international law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Rosenstein, a bookish 41-year-old, is trying to get 250 conventioneering lawyers to settle down after lunch, which isn't easy. It's a perfect South Florida day, sunny and in the eighties, and the litigators would rather be outside sampling the fun at the Ritz Carlton Key Biscayne—like sailing and swimming—than sitting through another canned exercise in team building.

But there's no escape, and, besides, this exercise sounds kinda cool. "Leadership is a

Using a climbing tragedy as a case study seems strange, but companies like Mars and Morgan Stanley pay Roberto big bucks to explain how high-altitude decisions apply to the white-collar world.

lesson that can be learned, which is why we've hired this man to speak about Mount Everest," Rosenstein says of the day's last speaker, Mike Roberto. A 36-year-old consultant with a doctorate in business administration from Harvard, Roberto has built a nifty sideline out of lecturing on the leadership lessons he's gleaned from the Everest disaster of May 10, 1996.

"Mike Roberto has three degrees from Harvard, including a doctorate, and he used to teach there," Rosenstein says. "He's written a case study on Everest—remember those from law school?"

Roberto takes the floor, wearing a headset mike. He's five foot eight, black-haired, and amiable, and he quickly launches into an engaging hour-and-a-half dialogue with the audience. "So! You've all read the case study," he begins, his voice booming in the cavernous hotel ballroom. Heads turn down. Papers shuffle. "What went wrong on Everest in the spring of '96?"

The lawyers gamely shout answers—hubris! testosterone! altitude!—while Roberto compiles a list on an overhead projector, pacing the room between scribbles. When he really wants to drive home a point, Roberto tends to stop, pirouette in his loafers, and lunge forward. He plays to the crowd by making self-deprecating Italian jokes; before long he has them eating out of his hand.

It's a strange concept—using the world's most famous climbing tragedy as a management lesson—but Roberto does a brisk trade with his Everest case study, lecturing about 12 times a year for a fee that an Orrick representative puts in the vicinity of "the tens of thousands." Since 2003, Roberto has taken his act to 20 different states, the UK, Japan, Costa Rica, and Canada. Among his clients have been Morgan Stanley, Mars (the candy company), Novartis (pharmaceuticals), Segue Software, and the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island.

The appeal? Even for nonclimbers, Everest is inherently riveting, and Roberto knows how to make the '96 events relevant. "Our partners want to work with people who understand our culture," says Laura Saklad, Orrick's director of professional development. "At company retreats like this, the trick is to find someone who can both teach and entertain. That's Roberto."