AMAL CLOONEY

AMAL CLOONEY DOESN’T LIKE TALKING ABOUT herself. Sit with the 44-year-old lawyer, and she’ll take you on a tour of some of the worst places in the world, where despots reign and standing up for your rights can get you killed. Yet, inevitably, she finds women in these places who want to challenge power, and she supercharges them with her own power: the law.

I know that because I’m one of them. Just for doing my job as a journalist, the authorities in the Philippines filed 10 arrest warrants against me in less than two years. Amal has helped defend me since 2019, and I’m a rarity for her because she can actually talk to me. In the past, her journalist clients were in prison, and she worked to free them by combining law with an incisive understanding of politics, pragmatism, and public advocacy.

What I’ve learned as one of her clients is that her empathy is as strong as her knowledge of the