LL.M. Tiia-Maria Ripatti has joined the FAI team as a Legal Counsel on 7 December 2022. Together with the FAI team, Tiia-Maria is responsible for the day-to-day administration of arbitrations and mediations.
Welcome to the FAI Tiia-Maria! How did you end up working with dipsute resolution and what is your professional background?
Thank you! I started working with disputes first when I was still studying for my bachelor’s degree. I was interning at the FAI at the time, and started to gain more knowledge of dispute resolution and dreaming of a career as a dispute resolution lawyer. I decided to apply for an LL.M. at Queen Mary University of London at their Paris campus. I continued working for the FAI part-time and at the same time studied in Paris. That year strengthened my vision that I wanted to work with dispute resolution in the future.
In 2019, I started working first as a trainee and later as an associate lawyer in a boutique law firm in Helsinki specialised in dispute resolution and competition law. I continued on that path, and the next years I spent mostly working with arbitrations, although I also changed firms at some point.
What do you expect from working at the FAI?
Now that I have spent almost four years working in a law firm, I felt that it was a good time to broaden my skills outside the law firm environment. I expect that I will be able to contribute to the promotion of Finnish arbitration, but also have the opportunity to learn and develop new best practices in our field. I believe that the FAI and Finnish arbitration have a bright future ahead of them, and I think that more and more international parties will find their way to resolve their disputes in Finland based on our neutrality and the cost-effectiveness of the FAI’s services. I’m very excited to “return home” to the FAI!
