Amal Clooney

Amal Clooney (Alamuddin; أمل كلوني; born February 3, 1978) is a Lebanese–British barrister.

Notable clients of hers include former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko, Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad, and the journalists Maria Ressa, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova and Mohamed Fahmy.

Amal Clooney has held various appointments with the UK government and the UN, and is also an adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School.

He received his MBA degree at the American University of Beirut, and returned to Lebanon in 1991, after the end of the civil war.

Her mother Baria (née Miknass) was born to a Lebanese Sunni father from Tripoli in northern Lebanon and a Palestinian-Jordanian mother (Amal’s maternal grandmother).

She was a political journalist and foreign editor of the Saudi-run newspaper al-Hayat.

She is a founder of the public relations company International Communication Experts, which is part of a larger company that specialises in celebrity guest bookings, publicity photography, and event promotion.

Amal attended Dr Challoner's High School, a girls' grammar school located in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire, prior to university.

She then studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received an exhibition grant and the Shrigley Award.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in jurisprudence in 2000 and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's.

The following year she entered New York University School of Law to study for the Master of Laws (LL.M) degree.

She received the Jack J. Katz Memorial Award for excellence in entertainment law.

While at NYU she worked for one semester in the office of Sonia Sotomayor, then a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and NYU Law faculty member.

Clooney is qualified to practice law in the United States, England, and Wales.

She was admitted to the bar in New York in 2002, and called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2010.

She has also practised at international courts in The Hague, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Clooney worked at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City for three years as part of the Criminal Defense and Investigations Group, where her clients included Enron and Arthur Andersen.

She completed a judicial clerkship at the International Court of Justice in 2004, serving under Judge Vladlen S. Vereshchetin from Russia, Judge Nabil Elaraby from Egypt, and ad hoc Judge Sir Franklin Berman from the United Kingdom.

She was subsequently based in The Hague working in the Office of the Prosecutor at the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon and at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where she was Judicial assistant to Judge Patrick Robinson, Presiding Judge.

The case charged the former President of former Republic of Yugoslavia with crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia during the war in the former Yugoslavia.

In 2010, Clooney was called to the Bar of England & Wales, Inner Temple.

She is a practising barrister at Doughty Street Chambers.

Clooney is ranked in the legal directories Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners as a leading barrister in international human rights law, public international law, and international criminal law.

She is described as 'a brilliant legal mind' who 'handles cases of real international importance' and 'knows her brief inside out'.

She is said to be a 'natural lead advocate' who is 'tactically first class' and 'a rare combination of intellectual depth and pragmatism'.

The directories also spotlight her 'superb advocacy' and 'commanding presence before courts' and describe her as 'a dream performer before international tribunals'.

They also emphasize that she is 'fantastically innovative' with an ability to galvanize 'heads of state, foreign ministers and business ... in a way that is very effective' for victims of human rights abuses.

She is described as 'unafraid to raise novel points of law', 'very sophisticated in pushing the boundaries' and having a 'passionate commitment to the law and compassion for the people it serves'.

Clooney represents clients before international courts including the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.

She represents victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence and is representing a group of Iraqi victims from the Yazidi community seeking accountability for genocide and other crimes perpetrated by ISIS, including Nobel Peace Prize Laurette, Nadia Murad.

Clooney is also representing Yazidi victims in a landmark case, alleging complicity in crimes against humanity by a French company, Lafarge for allegedly funded ISIS to keep open a plant in northern Syria that operated between 2011 and 2014.

In 2021, Clooney was co-plaintiff's and victims' counsel in the first case in which an ISIS member was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison.

Clooney regularly represents journalists and is currently leading the international counsel team acting for Filipino journalist and CEO of the news website Rappler, Maria Ressa.

Ressa faces a series of legal charges that could lead to about 100 years in prison.

In 2016, she and her husband, American actor George Clooney, cofounded the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

Amal Alamuddin (أمل علم الدين) was born in Beirut, Lebanon.

Her first name is from أمل, in Arabic, meaning "hope".

Her family left Lebanon when she was two years old, during the Lebanese Civil War, and settled in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, UK.

Amal has three siblings: one sister (Tala Alamuddin) and two half-brothers from her father's first marriage.

Her father Ramzi Alamuddin, is a full Lebanese Druze from the Alam al-Din dynasty, from the village of Baakline in the Chouf District.