Rather than pursuing a military career in Finland, Aku Sorainen built a law firm chain in the Baltics. 30 years later, Sorainen’s firm is the largest and most influential in the region, writes Finnish newspaper Kauppalehti.
Life in 1990s Tallinn was unpredictable — especially after dark. Sorainen recalls a time when a Finnish lawyer’s desk might hold not just contract drafts but also a weapon.
Moving to the “murder capital of Europe”
After graduating from the University of Lapland, Sorainen settled in Tallinn to establish the Estonian office of Hedman & Partners. He shared an apartment with two other young Finnish men and enjoyed the nightlife just like others his age. By the mid-1990s, Tallinn had earned the grim reputation of being the murder capital of Europe — if not the whole world. Still, staying home in the evenings didn’t appeal to the Finnish trio.
One evening, they were at the Mefisto bar on Sakala Street.
“I asked a ballerina to dance, which didn’t sit well with a trio of local tough guys. They were looking for a fight, but instead of beating me up, they attacked an innocent bystander. The message was clear — the same thing could happen to me,” Sorainen recounts.
A couple of days later, Sorainen saw the same trio at Flexer Gym, where he trained almost daily.
“I boldly went up to say hi. They laughed and said, “That’s the Finnish lawyer.” After that, we greeted each other politely, and they never caused me any trouble again.”
Things have since normalised in the Baltics and guns are no longer brought to the negotiating table.
However, back in the 1990s, Sorainen says that occasionally happened. The last time he saw a pistol in a business negotiation was in Lithuania around the turn of the millennium.
Sorainen shares an example of the daily realities in Estonia during the early 1990s — one that involves printer paper and toilet paper.
“In my small office, I was drafting contracts and printing them out so I could read and revise them more easily. I’d throw some of the papers away, and later I was surprised to find the same printouts in the office restroom. Someone had neatly cut them into four pieces and placed them there as toilet paper,” Sorainen recalls.
“So, basically, people were wiping their behinds with my contracts — and I was one of them.”
Discovering Estonia’s past
At first, Sorainen tried to get by in Estonia using Finnish and English, but he soon realised that he needed to learn Estonian. He hired an older woman as his teacher whose brother had been deported to Siberia during the Soviet era.
“Through her, I began to understand the tragedy of the Estonian nation — something that’s hard to grasp from a Finnish perspective,” says Aku Sorainen. “Estonia’s experience also helped me understand the significance of Finland’s defensive victories and the preservation of its independence.”
According to Sorainen, Estonia’s current extremely critical attitude toward Russia stems from its recent past and the deep wounds of national experience.
“But that’s another matter entirely — whether that attitude always translates into the best possible politics on the international stage.”
Building the firm
Originally, Sorainen planned a military career in Finland and even attended officer cadet school before realising he was more interested in becoming a lawyer.
While considering a thesis topic, he noticed that the newly independent Baltic countries were still a “blank spot” when it came to legal services.
Sorainen first travelled to Lithuania to begin research for his thesis on Baltic economic law. He then moved on to Latvia, and finally to Estonia.
“I needed sponsors for my thesis, so I approached major Finnish companies for funding. I went to Neste, Valio, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and I was surprised when all of them wanted to sponsor me,” Sorainen recalls.
At the same time, those companies asked him to broaden his thesis to include labour law, foreign investment, and real estate law.
“I agreed, and my thesis expanded quite a bit. Eventually, lawyers from those same companies started calling me and inviting me to business lunches. That’s when I realised — there might be an opportunity here for me.”
After graduating, Sorainen looked for a Finnish law firm willing to send him to Tallinn — and found one: Hedman.
When Sorainen founded his own law office in Tallinn in the mid-1990s, he quickly realised he couldn’t find any local staff. In the end, he assembled an international team made up of an American, a Swede, a Finn — and eventually one Estonian.
“In the beginning, we had to train all our own lawyers, and quality control took a huge amount of time. It was the same all across the Baltics. Only around 2005 did legal education reach a sufficiently high standard.”
Sorainen himself wasn’t admitted to the Estonian Bar Association until around the turn of the millennium. At one point, it came dangerously close to foreign nationals being banned entirely from providing legal services in Estonia.
“We eventually managed to block those plans — partly thanks to the Finnish Embassy, and probably also because Estonia was on the brink of EU membership,” Sorainen says.
“We had the same problem in Lithuania. I sent a Finnish lawyer, Pekka Puolakka, to open an office in Vilnius, and there was an attempt to expel him from the country.”
In the end, Puolakka was allowed to stay.
Learning from mistakes
One of Sorainen’s biggest failures was the Helsinki office, which only operated for a couple of years.
“What happened was that the same Finnish law firms we had been working with from Tallinn started seeing us as competitors. Instead of gaining clients, we began losing them because of the Helsinki office.”
Another major setback came with the closure of the Belarus office due to political pressure.
“For all of us — in Estonia and even in Finland — it’s in our security interest for Belarus to remain independent and for its private sector to grow. But eventually, the political pressure, especially from Lithuania, became too intense, and we handed over the office to our local partner.”
Estonia’s long economic slump doesn’t particularly bother Sorainen. His firm now has plenty of work — but not too much.
“This kind of trend is something our industry notices early,” he says.
According to Sorainen, Lithuania has taken over Estonia’s position as the “Baltic Tiger.” Estonia is now watching its neighbour closely to see what it’s doing differently — and perhaps better.
Outside of work, Sorainen has also learned balance.
“For the first ten years, I worked seven days a week. You learn from your mistakes.”
Now he stays in shape with tennis, yoga, and gym workouts. He finds peace of mind at his countryside farm in southern Estonia.
Finding success with a spin-off company
Sorainen has also found time to work on a spin-off company called Crespect, which develops practice management solutions for law firms. Crespect’s origins go back 25 years, when Sorainen felt his expanding law firm network was becoming unmanageable.
“We had multiple offices, each operating in its own way. Everyone had their own working habits, and we didn’t have standardised processes,” Sorainen explains.
Eventually, one of his German lawyers discovered that some German firms had implemented ISO 9001-certified quality systems.
Sorainen asked that lawyer to develop a similar system for his firm — a process that took six years. A management system was later built on top of that foundation.
Crespect’s development began with the ISO 9001 model, and over time it evolved into a comprehensive work tool now supported by an AI-powered chatbot. The tool helps lawyers find structured data for daily use.
“Crespect is one of a kind globally, and it’s already being adopted outside the Baltics.”
Having once succeeded during a time of major historical transformation, this Finnish entrepreneur now looks ahead once more — this time toward AI and international growth.
Read the full article in Kauppalehti here: Kauppalehti. Aku Sorainen viikon henkilö
