Back in October, lawyers at the Reston office of Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe wanted to make a splash at a networking event they were hosting. They pondered how to impress guests while encouraging them to mingle and talk. "There are lots of networking events where everyone stands around, but don’t know how to make conversation. Having gone to so many networking events, they’re painful," says Frank Connolly, an attorney at the firm.

Suddenly, a light bulb went off. Try a tournament of Foosball, the current rage among the young, high-tech clients Connolly’s firm wanted to impress. "Here’s a way to mingle. Show them we’re not a bunch of stiffs," Connolly says. "We lost the suits and ties. We want to be approachable." The event raised $5,000 for Reston Interfaith, a nonprofit human services agency.

Wait a minute. Foosball? The table soccer game usually associated with bar hoppers guzzling beer at happy hour? Exactly. "[Foosball is] a wonderful way for them to get away and unwind a bit," says Rafe Wilkinson, president of Richmond-based Transadyne. The marketing solutions firm has a Foosball table in its front hall. Rather than being a deterrent to clients, Transadyne’s customers look at their Foosball table as a boon. "This is a company that’s called on to think outside the box, and the environment they create clearly stimulates that," says Tom Blue of East3 Ltd., one of Transadyne’s clients.

Transadyne has four employees who take full advantage of the game, which involves spinning plastic players around so they kick a small ball at just the right moments. The Transadyne foosers, Lee Blue, Andrew Westerhouse, John Duncan and Bobby Smith, for example, usually play every day around lunchtime or towards quitting time, which can vary. Once, after finishing a project at 2:30 a.m., "Lee and I played until 4 in the morning," says Smith, a graphics designer. "I got the short end of the stick on that project," Blue recalls, with no ill will because the project ended with a lively game of Foosball.

Although Transadyne is setting up a Playstation as an extra perk, the company isn’t expecting the Foosball table to get dusty. "You’ve got four people involved with this," Blue says, as opposed to a video game’s one or two players. Plus Playstation games take a lot longer to play than a 10-minute Foosball game. And, the guys say, when you sit in front of a computer screen all day, sitting in front of a TV doesn’t sound like recreation.

That’s part of the beauty and allure of Foosball. It provides a stress-free distraction from work. "It doesn’t take a lot of time," Piper Marbury’s Connolly says. "It doesn’t necessarily take a great deal of athletic skill to be good at it." And Connolly particularly hopes the game is here to stay. "Many law firms are seeking to make a name for themselves," Connolly says. "Are we the Foosball firm now? I would hope so."

As the Reston tournament showed, Foosball is a great way to get clients together. Dozens of companies sent their own Foosball champs to the event. "We had a traditional NCAA tournament-style grid," Connolly says. The firm hopes to hold the tournament annually and include more teams next time.

One team who made it to the tournament was from Hale & Dorr, a law firm with offices in Reston and Washington. Entering the tournament "seemed appropriate for our entry into the high-tech Northern Virginia market," says Senior Partner Brent B. Siler. Attorneys at the Reston office have been playing since the office opened last spring. The firm doesn’t think having Foosball tables on hand interferes with productivity, but rather provides the occasional needed diversion. "There’s a game going on several times a day," Siler says. With all that practice, Siler and his mates thought they’d fare pretty well in the tournament, but they ended up walking away with their tails between their legs. "We found a pretty high-level of competition at the tournament," Siler adds. They also discovered another very important thing that day: "We’re better lawyers than Foosball players."