Celebrated human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin is now Mrs George Clooney and with that comes all the media hoopla that surrounds the celebrity nuptials. 'Lucky' Amal bags Hollywood's prize bachelor, shrieked headlines. However, even the most cursory glance at Amal's resume and accomplishments makes it clear that the 'lucky' one in the brand new partnership is probably George. So who was Amal before becoming the wife of Hollywood's most elusive bachelor?
Amal is a British lawyer of Lebanese origin. She was born in Beirut in 1978. Her father was a professor at the American University of Beirut. He mother was a journalist and the foreign editor of the Pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat. In the 1980s, the family moved from a civil war-torn Lebanon to London.
Amal went to Dr Challoner's High School in Buckinghamshire and then graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence from St Hugh's College in Oxford in the year 2001.
Then she moved to New York and completed her Master of Law degree from New York University (NYU). She worked at the international law firm Sullivan & Cromwell for three years before becoming a NYU-sponsored clerk at the International Court of Justice in 2004.
In the years that followed, she would work in the Office of the Prosecutor at the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon and at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. (Pics: Meet the Clooneys- George and Amal in Venice)
In 2010, she returned to the UK to work at the Doughty Street Chambers. She has a slew of high profile, yet controversial, clients on her resume ranging from former Libyan intelligence chief Abdallah Al Senussi, former prime minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko and more recently WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Amal was part of the United Nations' three-member commission that was formed to look into possible violations of the rules of war in Gaza during the latest chapter of the Israel-Gaza conflict earlier this year.
Amal, who is fluent in English, Arabic and French, has also written a couple of books. Her new husband George Clooney once described her as the 'the hottest human rights lawyer in the world' in one the flirty emails he had written to her during their romance (He alluded to himself as the 'hottest man in the world' in the same line).
According to George, they first met in Italy and started out discussing new plans to prevent human rights abuse. They continued to meet and were spotted together many times till, in April 2014, they officially confirmed that they were engaged.
Almost five months later, they married in Venice in a private ceremony attended by close friends. (Also Read: Amal and George Marriage Report)
