Amal Alamuddin’s caseload

Amal has brains, beauty and she plays netball (similar to basetball) - no wonder why George is marrying her!!!


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Amal Alamuddin’s caseload: why the future Mrs George Clooney isn't about to give up her day job as a human rights lawyer
In between last-minute preparations for her wedding to George Clooney, Ms Alamuddin is representing Julian Assange, an Al Jazeera journalist jailed in Egypt and Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief. Susannah Butter on the top human rights lawyer who isn’t about to give up her day job


With a few gnomic comments, Julian Assange set the world wondering this week about his next move. At a press conference that packed out a small room in the Ecuadorian Embassy he announced he will be leaving the building where he has been hiding out for the past two years, at some mysterious time “soon”.

Assange may give the impression of being a lone operator but outside the embassy he has a carefully curated network of bright minds behind him. The last time he was out in public, the WikiLeaker was photographed leaving Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court with a woman in a trenchcoat at his side, sunglasses pushing back her dark hair. She is Amal Alamuddin, the woman who has been chosen to represent the head of WikiLeaks during his extradition proceedings to Sweden.

While Assange plots his next move, Alamuddin is far away on the shores of Lake Como, where she is making last- minute preparations for her marriage to George Clooney next month at his £25 million house.
But it isn’t all seating plans and dress fittings for this ambitious 36-year-old. Assange is just one on a roster of high- profile clients. Alamuddin’s work is relentless; so much so that this month she had to turn down an offer from the United Nations to be one of three people on an inquiry investigating war crimes in Gaza. She said: “I am honoured...but given existing commitments — including eight ongoing cases — unfortunately I could not accept this role.”

More evidence of this caseload came yesterday, when an article by Alamuddin was published on the Huffington Post website with the headline “The anatomy of an unfair trial”. She describes herself as “lawyer, activist and author” and takes on the Egyptian government, arguing in meticulously researched detail that the trial of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt was rigged, with a judge who wore sunglasses throughout the trial, and how the journalists working for the Al Jazeera English news network should not be behind bars. One of the journalists, Mohamed Fahmy, who used to work for CNN and the New York Times, is Alamuddin’s client.

“Alamuddin is working on all the top, sexy assignments,” says Alex Aldridge, editor of Legal Cheek. “It’s impressive given that she is only 36.”
So what cases are on the books of this extraordinary legal talent and how does she make it work?

“Alamuddin has had an unusual career,” says Aldridge. “Unlike most barristers she started out in the United States, at Sullivan and Cromwell, a big corporate organisation that is our equivalent of a ‘magic circle’ firm.” She was able to do this because after studying at St Hugh’s College Oxford, where she gained a 2:1 in law, she went to the New York University School of Law. “Her time as an attorney in the States means she made good contacts,” says Aldridge. “She couldn’t have planned it better.”

She also worked for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was nominated by Barack Obama to her current position. Australia’s Julia Gillard is a fan of Alamuddin’s too, and followed her on Twitter before Alamuddin deleted her profile due to unwanted Clooney-related attention.
Alamuddin was born in Beirut to father Ramzi, a retired professor of business studies, and high-achieving mother Baria, who is currently foreign editor of Al Hayat newspaper and has interviewed heads of state including Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

The family moved to Buckinghamshire when Alamuddin was two years old and she attended Dr Challoner’s grammar school in Amersham. Baria has said she is “immensely proud of Amal’s academic and professional achievements contributing to justice and humanity around the world”.
Alamuddin returned to the UK in 2010 and requalified as a barrister. She was so impressive that Geoffrey Robertson QC offered her a job at Doughty Street on the spot when she came in to advise him on Lebanon.

At Doughty Street her colleagues include former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer and the chambers is a good fit for anyone who wants a career in human rights law. Hayley Eustace, Bar Editor for The Legal 500 UK, says: “Doughty Street is at the top of its game for civil liberties work. Geoffrey Robertson is a true heavyweight.” Aldridge believes she would have taken a pay cut moving from the US, “but the work is more glamorous and involves less gruelling hours than corporate law. At big international firms like the one she worked for in the US few women make partner and they have a high drop-away rate, so coming to somewhere like Doughty Street isn’t an untypical move.”
She hit the ground running at Doughty Street, representing Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian Prime Minister, and going on the BBC news to talk about her with informed compassion.

It didn’t take her long to gain an impressive reputation, and Ben Emmerson QC, a giant of the legal scene who was Abu Qatada’s lawyer, chose her to take on the International Criminal Court. She is representing Abdullah Al Senussi, former Libyan intelligence chief and Muamar Gaddafi’s right-hand man in a case of alleged crimes against humanity. The case turns on whether Al Senussi should be tried in Libya or the Hague and Alamuddin says that “a scary precendent has been set” by the International Criminal Court in deciding he could be tried in Libya, without letting Alamuddin or any of the International Criminal Court appointed defence team visit.

Professor William Schabas, who is working with her on that case, says: “She is very attentive to complex situations, and remains on top of a huge amount of material. She is a scholar as well as a barrister.”

Alamuddin will not comment on the morality of defending a man with as shady a record as Al Senussi. “Most barristers face these questions,” says Aldridge. “It’s her job. If clerks find work for barristers and they have space in their diary they must do it. She will probably get more work like this.”
Fellow Doughty Street lawyer John Jones QC, who is defending Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, has said: “Justice needs defence lawyers. The system only works if there’s robust advocacy on both sides.”

Despite this gruelling workload, friends of Alamuddin say she is unassuming and a great friend. Until recently she lived off Portobello Road and played netball in a west London group, where teammates have said she was “nimble on her feet”. “She was goal attack and a good shooter. It took a while to learn she was a barrister. As an aside she would say she couldn’t play because she had to go to the UN to work with Kofi Annan.”

Philippa Webbe, who shared an office with Alamuddin at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, told BBC Radio Four that she is “one of the first people I would call if I had a career dilemma or a personal crisis, and she is good at making playlists for parties”.

This is a woman who inspires admiration and loyalty. Aldridge says “the bar is quite bitchy but everyone has been supportive towards her, even privately, so she must be well liked”. Those at Doughty Street speak of a good lawyer and a lovely woman.

She has even charmed the families of her colleagues. Robertson’s wife Kathy Lette says: “The first time I saw her, when Geoff said, ‘This is my junior’, I was like, ‘Oh yeah?’ My jaw hit the floor: she’s so stunningly beautiful but she’s so easy to talk to and great fun. She has an idiosyncratic, quirky style that will not be dictated to. I adore that — that she is her own woman.”

Of course Clooney has raised her profile — on a recent trip to Prague his entourage had to put Vaseline on the trees to prevent photographers climbing them to catch a snap of the couple. In the legal world Aldridge says reactions to the match have been mixed. “Some people at bar will be quite sniffy about it but profile-raising is important. Her strategy of not commenting on her personal life but on high-profile cases is shrewd.”

Schabas can’t see the trifling matter of some Hollywood attention being a problem for this woman who is used to dealing with high courts and accused war criminals. “It is inevitable that there will be a bit of awe but she is in a modern relationship where her partner loves her largely because of who she is and what she does. He will encourage her to keep being what she is and that’s great. I can’t see why she wouldn’t rise to the very top.”

PigPen wrote:on a recent trip to Prague his entourage had to put Vaseline on the trees to prevent photographers climbing them to catch a snap of the couple...

Is this where they are???

Put Vaseline on trees?

So no one could climb the trees to take photos of them as they walked by.

PigPen wrote:So no one could climb the trees to take photos of them as they walked by.

I never heard of that before....

Despite this gruelling workload, friends of Alamuddin say she is unassuming and a great friend. Until recently she lived off Portobello Road and played netball in a west London group, where teammates have said she was “nimble on her feet”. “She was goal attack and a good shooter. It took a while to learn she was a barrister. As an aside she would say she couldn’t play because she had to go to the UN to work with Kofi Annan.”

Philippa Webbe, who shared an office with Alamuddin at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, told BBC Radio Four that she is “one of the first people I would call if I had a career dilemma or a personal crisis, and she is good at making playlists for parties”.

This is a woman who inspires admiration and loyalty. Aldridge says “the bar is quite bitchy but everyone has been supportive towards her, even privately, so she must be well liked”. Those at Doughty Street speak of a good lawyer and a lovely woman.

She has even charmed the families of her colleagues. Robertson’s wife Kathy Lette says: “The first time I saw her, when Geoff said, ‘This is my junior’, I was like, ‘Oh yeah?’ My jaw hit the floor: she’s so stunningly beautiful but she’s so easy to talk to and great fun. She has an idiosyncratic, quirky style that will not be dictated to. I adore that — that she is her own woman.” 



That's a very interesting profile about George's future wife and explains a lot about why he has chosen her to be his life's partner.
They sound very well suited to me, a mere outsider.....
and a George Clooney fan of many years.

And maybe this'll put to rest the fiction that she's "only" representing dubious figures, has never done anything good and is only in it for the money. But then, maybe not. Haters gonna hate.

You are so right Katie haters will hate no matter what. It is sad she has worked hard and used her brain to get where she is . 

As for the vaseline on tree's that sounds ridiculous.

This ought to start a fire storm..... I don't hate her or anyone else.  Regardless of what is written, still can't embrace her or her clients. Why George picked her... only he knows. So, to use one of my favorite expressions... let's agree to disagree!!

Very nice article, full of inaccuracies. No pp they are not in Prague, the "Vaseline story" belongs to someone else, I think Angelina Jolie.
Lovely airy fairy story, AND that is exactly WHY many do not trust Amal and this liaison.

Still no pro bono

Yes agree to disagree by all means.....but I don't understand....about what ?
We're supposed to be GTC fans here and as such be happy for him when something good happens in his life....right ? 

I must be naive or thick to think that I suppose.

But I Don't Care !      George is getting 
married....YAY !

George fell in love with a woman who ticked all the right boxes for him. I'm glad he is happy and getting married. Amals job isn't popular nor does it have to be this is her career she chose it because she obviously believes in the work she is doing. The same way George believes in his movie work and causes.

Alisonfan wrote:Very nice article, full of inaccuracies.  No pp they are not in Prague, the "Vaseline story" belongs to someone else, I think Angelina Jolie.
Lovely airy fairy story, AND that is exactly WHY many do not trust Amal and this liaison.

Still no pro bono

How do you know she hasn't done pro bono?  Just because they dont mention it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, especially when she works at a firm that has a high percentage of pro bono and legal aid cases.

She may not discuss that or want that talked about something she does because she can and wants it kept private. we don't know everything about her job or her life nor should we.

Airy fairy story, Alison? Which bit?

Every person quoted is a high level professional - including Alex Aldridge, who aside from his website/twitter page Legal Cheek, is or has been legal correspondent of the Times, the Guardian and many other publications.........

party animal - not! wrote:Airy fairy story, Alison? Which bit?

Every person quoted is a high level professional - including Alex Aldridge, who aside from his website/twitter page Legal Cheek, is or has been legal correspondent of the Times, the Guardian and many other publications.........

I can only imagine how disappointed some folk on here are in George's choice 
for his future wife. 
I do so feel for them....Oh dear....Nothing to find on the Internet 
about her.....Except good solid facts about her career.     

 

Just because you are a George Clooney fan doesn't mean you have to agree with everything he says or does, including who he chooses to marry.  I don't think I have ever seen on here anyone who said they HATE her.  All these people who have come out to praise her are hopefully her friends.  Does anyone think they are going to say anything bad about her, and that includes family and friends of George.  There are many things I dislike about her but hate is not one of them.  This is what agree to disagree is about.  So please because we don't agree with you please quit calling us haters.

Pro~bono!!!! Lmfao another snow job

'Until recently she lived off the Portobello Road'..........so they've found a house?

I think that is why we don't get shots of her or him in London they have moved . Probably somewhere more private.

I think what is bothering some is that there is nothing bad said about Amal .  I think that if she were a horrible person by now we would have found out . There are enough people who would know to tell. There are no secrets when you get with a celebrity the nasties come out of the wood work to tell everything they know with glee.

Cece42 wrote:please because we don't agree with you please quit calling us haters.

I'm referring to the people who insist that NOTHING Amal has ever done in her work is good; the ones who claim she's only interested in representing immoral, unethical crooks.  Some of her clients are very dubious, that's true, but claiming that all of them are - especially when we still have no full picture of all the work she's done - is simply untrue.  

Sadly there are haters out there; they're the ones who dislike everything Amal wears and go on to claim that not only is her choice of outfit ugly, it's also wrong [we saw this a lot with George's exes: fans couldn't accept that they simply had a different style and insisted that the outfit was actually wrong].  They're the ones who claim she looks smug if she's smiling in pictures, or snooty if she's not smiling (she can't win either way).  They're the ones who will find fault with every single thing she says, does, wears, doesn't say, doesn't do etc etc etc and will then try to justify their dislike.  

This happens with every woman George dates so I'm not at all surprised to see it happen with his fiancee.  I've come to the conclusion over the years that these posters are genuinely blind to their dislike and are unaware of how much it influences what they think are objective opinions.  The haters show their bias by reading things into pictures that aren't there - pictures of George on a motorbike are 'sad' whereas when he's alone he looks 'happy' but actually if you were to isolate just George's facial expression from all pictures (solo and with girlfriend) you'd see he has the same facial expression in all.  Similarly, when picures of George and Stacy (or was it Elisabatta? I don't remember now) coming out of a restaurant were 'analysed' they showed George was "angry" and that they'd probably split up.  A video that came out later showed (as did the photos) that they were holding hands and laughing!

With George's exes it was soooo easy to trash them: their clothes, their hair, their makeup, their body/figure,their attitude and of course their 'jobs', their perceived lack of intelligence and their willingness to pose naked/nearly naked in photos. But with Amal, what stick can we use to beat her with? Because I won't allow trashing of her looks (she's not a model so she sets her own standards of beauty, it's not for us to comment on) it comes down to two things: her clothes and her job.

Things don't have to be so black and white: not everything Amal does will be wonderful and like all humans she'll make misjudgements, choose badly, misses the mark but equally not everything she does will be a disaster either.  

Back to Amal and her work.  Amal doesn't get to pick and choose what cases she wants to work on (think about it: how on earth will she get the 'good people' cases when she has no experience because she's turned down all the bad ones?) and there isn't a lawyer on this earth who hasn't had to defend bad people or prosecute good people.  That's simply a fact of her job.  Carping about it as though it reflects something about her own morality just shows a lack of understanding about what she does.  

The British legal system does seem to be very different from the US one, which I think causes a lot of problems.  From what I understand, barristers like Amal are self employed and get work through referral.  In theory she could turn cases down but in reality when you say no you're pretty much ensuring that referrer won't bring you another case again so effectively you'll end up with no work (it's a small world and easy enough to bad mouth someone).  

Once you get to a high enough position, with enough impressive experience and a reputation in the field, then it's a different matter, but she's not there yet.  She's still building her reputation and needs more big name cases (high profile in the legal world, even if none of us ever hear about them) to her name, some of which of course, are going to be distasteful. In fact, calll me a cynic if you will, as she's working in the world of international law, representing governments, dissidents and the like, it's a high chance that whoever she represents is going to be unsavoury simply by nature of the field she's working in.

Amen Katie Amal is simply human no more no less. She has to do her job and most attorneys rep people that are not always good. That is the nature of the job.

annemarie wrote:I think what is bothering some is that there is nothing bad said about Amal .  I think that if she were a horrible person by now we would have found out . There are enough people who would know to tell. There are no secrets when you get with a celebrity the nasties come out of the wood work to tell everything they know with glee.

Precisely my thoughts annemarie ...but you have expressed them better than me, 
Thank you.

Katie, I have to say that although I do agree with some of what you say but there is a stop line! I too "serve the law"! and left a criminal practice for that very reason, they're all criminals!!! can't trust your client to tell you the truth, but you defend them anyway! I'm not a Lawyer, but I now work at a practice that doesn't have any criminal cases at all. It can be done!!! So if AA wants to build a name join the prosecution team NOT the defence of despot genocidal megalomaniacs! If you defend the good guys or those genuinely in need, it's far more rewarding than having to watch your back all the time!   

PigPen wrote:This ought to start a fire storm..... I don't hate her or anyone else.  Regardless of what is written, still can't embrace her or her clients. Why George picked her... only he knows. So, to use one of my favorite expressions... let's agree to disagree!!

Good debates and points made, ladies.  Agree to disagree.

fluffy wrote:I have to say that although I do agree with some of what you say but there is a stop line! I too "serve the law"! and left a criminal practice for that very reason, they're all criminals!!! can't trust your client to tell you the truth, but you defend them anyway! I'm not a Lawyer, but I now work at a practice that doesn't have any criminal cases at all. It can be done!!! So if AA wants to build a name join the prosecution team NOT the defence of despot genocidal megalomaniacs! If you defend the good guys or those genuinely in need, it's far more rewarding than having to watch your back all the time!

Sure it can be done but how would the world work if every lawyer made that decision?  There'd be no one to defend and all cases would be decided secretly depending how the lawyers felt about their client?

She's defended refugee Roma against the United Nations and does seem to do prosecution work as well (something that the critics don't seem to notice).  

In the field she's working in, she's going to come across some nasty characters as well as good ones and it's part of her job.