Amal Clooney

Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin; born (1978-02-03)3 February 1978) is a Lebanese, British, and French international human rights lawyer. She has represented several high-profile clients, including former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad, Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova, and Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy.

Clooney is Professor of Practice in International Law at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice, an institute she co-founded to harness the power of AI to increase access to justice. In 2016, she and her husband, American actor George Clooney, co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

Amal Alamuddin was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on 3 February 1978. Her father is Lebanese Druze and her mother is Lebanese Sunni Muslim from Tripoli. When she was two years old, her family moved to the United Kingdom to escape the Lebanese Civil War, settling in Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire. She has three siblings: one sister (Tala Alamuddin) and two half-brothers from her father's first marriage..

Her father, Ramzi Alamuddin, received his MBA degree at the American University of Beirut and returned to Lebanon in 1991, one year after the Lebanese Civil War ended. Her mother Baria (née Miknass), is from Tripoli in the North Governorate. She was a political journalist and foreign editor of the London-based newspaper al-Hayat, which is owned by Saudi Arabian prince Khalid bin Sultan Al Saud. She is also related to the late Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese-French businessman and arms broker, who was her father's first cousin.

Clooney attended Dr Challoner's High School, a girls' grammar school in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. She then studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received an exhibition grant and the Shrigley Award. In 2000, she graduated with an upper second-class degree in Jurisprudence and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's. Speaking in 2023, Clooney commented "St Hugh's took a chance on me and it really opened my eyes; it opened my mind; and it has opened so many doors. I have always been so grateful to St Hugh's for giving me my shot and my legal compass."

The following year, she enrolled at the New York University School of Law to study for an LLM degree. She received the Jack J. Katz Memorial Award for excellence in entertainment law. While at the university, she worked for one semester in the office of American lawyer and jurist Sonia Sotomayor, who was then a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and an NYU Law faculty member.

Clooney is qualified to practice law in New York and England and Wales. She was admitted to the New York Bar in 2002. In 2010, Clooney was called to the Bar of England and Wales, Inner Temple. She is a practising barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. She has also practised at international courts in The Hague, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. She 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. In 2024, Clooney was the recipient of a Legal 500 lawyer of the year award in recognition of her outstanding work and contributions in the field of international law.

Clooney 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 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 the former Republic of Yugoslavia with crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Clooney also worked as a Prosecutor at The Special Tribunal for Lebanon. She prosecuted the case against five members of Hezbollah, accused of assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri and others in 2005.