Pierce Seitz

Co-Director, Safe & Stable Homes Project

Pierce Hand is Co-Director of the Safe & Stable Homes Project, and he specifically oversees the Standing With Our Neighbors  (SWON) Program, which uses a placed-based legal services model to place attorneys directly in schools and communities for greater access to legal help. In this role, he leads a team of staff attorneys and community advocates to provide and arrange, through dedicated volunteer attorneys, free legal representation for tenants facing dire housing legal matters. SWON partners AVLF with schools and other community allies to focus volunteer resources on improving living conditions and housing stability in low-income neighborhoods – all to improve resident health, reduce school enrollment turnover, and enhance student attendance and performance.

Pierce attended undergraduate college at Emory University and law school at Georgia State University College of Law. Prior to joining AVLF, he served as a senior prosecutor at the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office; he worked in private practice as a commercial litigation associate at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP before then; and he taught public high school students as a former educator in Atlanta Public Schools. Currently, Pierce is an executive committee member of the Gate City Bar Association, a LEAD Atlanta Class of 2022 alum, a member of Mayor Andre Dickens’s LGBTQ Advisory Board, and a member of the Emory Alumni Board. He resides in Southeast Atlanta’s Poeplestown neighborhood with his husband, Scot, and he serves as Land Use and Zoning Chair for Neighborhood Planning Unit V.