Bird & Bird LLP

Dispute Resolution

Tom Vapaavuori is a partner in Bird & Bird's Helsinki office and the Head of our Finnish Dispute Resolution group as well as the co-head of our international Trade Secret group. He has a lot of experience in demanding litigations and arbitrations and trade secret matters.

Tom works with a broad range of company litigations, arbitrations and white collar crimes. He also acts as an arbitrator, as nominated by parties in disputes, or by the arbitration institutes. He advises his leading domestic and international clients on a broad range of contentious and non-contentious matters in several sectors.

In addition to dispute resolution he is especially active in contractual matters such as distribution, purchase and sale, co-operation, joint ventures, leasing, employment, intellectual property, IT and non-disclosure agreements.

From the beginning of this millennium, Tom has specialised in matters related to trade secret protection. He is the author of 'Trade Secrets and Non Disclosure Agreements', Finland's only legal handbook on the subject. A new, totally updated third edition of the handbook came out in 2019.

In trade secret matters Tom has worked as a member of a task force preparing Finland first trade secret law, and as a member of the ICC's Task Force on Confidentiality Agreements, which created an international Model Confidentiality Agreement. He has also advised multiple companies in trade secret matters and represented clients in court in trade secret violation cases.

Tom has written many articles and he regularly lectures at legal seminars on dispute resolution, trade secrets and contract law.

Finnish, English, Swedish

Member of the Finnish Bar Association

Member of the Finnish Industrial Property Rights Association

Member of the Finnish Association for Arbitration

LL.M., University of Helsinki 1993