Amal Alamuddin: the human rights lawyer who has hooked George Clooney

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Amal Alamuddin: the human rights lawyer who has hooked George Clooney

"Amal [Alamuddin] is a friend and a lawyer with a global perspective who is not afraid to deal with corruption of power or to tackle politicised cases,” Julian Assange has exclusively told the Evening Standard. Susannah Butter and Joshi Herrmann profile the hottest human rights lawyer on Earth

As the newly engaged partner of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor, Amal Alamuddin will doubtless become one of the most photographed women in the world in the coming months. But there is a photograph of the London lawyer — taken long before her romance with George Clooney began — that colleagues say shows she was already a star.

Taken in November 2012, it shows Alamuddin at the heart of the most high-profile human rights scrap of the moment — sitting alongside star QC Geoffrey Robertson and Yevgenia Tymoshenko, the daughter of then imprisoned Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whose release all three were fighting for. “She’s used to being in the limelight,” says her colleague and friend Mark Stephens, referring to that scene. He should know.

Stephens, the leading solicitor, hired Alamuddin on to the other high profile case of her stellar career — defending Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, against extradition to Sweden. Like the other colleagues of hers who spoke to the Standard this morning, Stephens is glowing about Clooney’s wife-to-be.

“She is a fabulously bright woman, she’s independent, and has a Rolls-Royce mind,” says Stephens, who says Alamuddin “has intersocial skills to die for.” Assange tells the Standard: “Amal is a friend and a lawyer with a global perspective who is not afraid to deal with corruption of power or to tackle politicised cases.”

The 36-year-old has also worked in the corridors of power. As well as the Tymoshenko and Assange cases, she was “picked” by Kofi Annan, according to Stephens — referring to her work as counsel to the UN inquiry on the use of drones in counter-terrorism operations. “She’s used to being in the limelight and doing difficult and complex — and politically tricky — cases,” says Stephens, skills that might serve her well now that the world is watching.

While her fiancé Clooney’s former flames include model Lisa Snowden, Alamuddin is said to also have experience of high profile dating. One person told the Standard this morning that she has been linked with Eric Schmidt, director of Google. The source says she hosted a dinner for him at Mayfair nightclub LouLou’s after the launch of his book The New Digital Age in May. “They were very close,” the source says. “She organised the dinner and is very smooth, a great hostess. Princess Beatrice and James Middleton were there.”

Alamuddin and Clooney began their relationship last October. They found time in their hectic schedules to go out for dinner at Berners Tavern in Fitzrovia, with Alamuddin donning some sparkly silver wedge boots for the occasion. In March, they tried the true test of being in a couple — a holiday, going to Tanzania and later on the Seychelles. When his film Monuments Men was screened at the White House with Obama in attendance, Alamuddin was on Clooney’s arm.

Her colleagues at Doughty Street Chambers told the Standard that they are “delighted at her happy news”. Chief executive Robin Jackson, said: “I understand George Clooney is involved in international humanitarian work, so I’m sure there is a connection there. Amal has been utterly wonderful since she arrived in Chambers. She brings a bright light to everything she is involved in, and I am so delighted at her happy news”.

Joint head of chambers Geoffrey Robertson QC, who has worked with Alamuddin on the Tymoshenko and Assange cases, says: “Amal Alamuddin is a brilliant and passionate defender of human rights who has put in the enormously hard work necessary to improving them. She is respected and admired by all her colleagues.”

Robertson’s wife, novelist Kathy Lette, is equally smitten. She told the Standard: “The woman is a brilliant lawyer, jaw-droppingly beautiful, perspicacious, principled, passionate about human rights, an adviser to Kofi Annan on Syria, fluent in three languages — French, Arabic and English — wise, witty, a good laugh and great fun. Hell, I’d marry her! As would every other heterosexual woman I know!”

Doughty Street chambers is said to be very understanding about its website crashing every time a picture of Alamuddin appears on celebrity sites. The chambers is used to attention. Legal Cheek editor Alex Arlidge told Your Barrister Boyfriend: “Doughty Street is the original hip human rights set … Doughty Street’s coolness remains, and to this day continues to lure glamorous barristers-to-be with a taste for do-gooding.”

Alamuddin’s family escaped from war-torn Beirut when she was young and settled in Buckinghamshire. They are part of the close knit Druze community. Her mother Baria, described as the Liz Taylor of Lebanon, is also a high achiever. She is currently foreign editor of Al Hayat newspaper and has interviewed numerous heads of state including Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro. Her father, Ramzi, is a retired preofessor of business studies at the American University of Beirut.

Alamuddin studied at Oxford and went on to the New York University School of Law. “She’s very well academically inclined,” says Stephens. A legal source says that — like most human rights lawyers, Alamuddin subsidises her pro-bono cases with more lucrative ones. 

How Alamuddin will cope in the spotlight is yet to be seen, but those who have worked with her say she has the tools to cope. “She has this incredibly strong moral compass, which helps you to get to the right answer in any case,” says Stephens, who also describes her as “very very good company”.

Women across the world might think Alamuddin has got lucky, but it sounds like the lucky one is Clooney.