Side-by-Side Comparison

Compare Divorce Lawyers

Pick any two Pinellas County divorce attorneys and see their track records side by side — objective counts from public court records, 2020–2026. No reviews, no star ratings, no scores.

Track Records Compared

Objective counts from Pinellas County dissolution-of-marriage court records, 2020–2026. Em dashes mean the value is not available in public records. Neither column is “better” — these are facts, not scores.

MetricGale H. MooreGale H. Moore PACody EmersonEmerson Law
Years licensedFlorida Bar3312
Pinellas dissolutions of recordAll-years dissolution-of-marriage cases315166
Active last 12 monthsCases filed in the last year1821
Final judgmentsCases ending with a signed final judgment7768
DismissedCases closed without a final judgment45
Settlement rate *See caveat below — not a win rate45.5%41.2%
Cases with childrenCustody and timesharing involved50101
Expert-witness casesCases with experts in the docket4144
Motions per caseAverage filings per case2.91.4
HearingsDocketed hearings across cases
BadgesDeterministic, threshold-based — hover for criteriaVeteranVery activeHandles complexVery activeHandles complex

* Settlement rate: Share of final judgments with a settlement agreement in the docket. Dismissals are not counted as settlements, and most private settlements never appear in dockets.

How They Match Up

Every sentence below is generated from the same fixed count templates for every pair of attorneys — filled in from public court records, with the data source and time window labeled on each block. Higher counts are facts of record, not recommendations, and nothing here measures skill or predicts outcomes.

Experience

Pinellas: Clerk portal-verified dissolutions of record (all years) · Hillsborough: derived from 13th Circuit clerk case records (not portal-verified) · Florida Bar years licensed · filings in the last 12 months

  • Gale H. Moore has 315 Pinellas dissolution cases of record vs Cody Emerson's 166 — 149 more cases of record for Gale H. Moore. A larger count means more documented Pinellas dissolutions, nothing more.
  • In Hillsborough County, Gale H. Moore has 1 dissolution case of record vs Cody Emerson's 9.
  • Gale H. Moore has been licensed 33 years vs Cody Emerson's 12 — a 21-year difference in time licensed, not a measure of ability.
  • In the last 12 months, Gale H. Moore appeared in 18 newly filed cases vs Cody Emerson's 21 — 3 more recent filings for Cody Emerson.

Filing Style

Analyzed 2020–2026 Pinellas docket sample

  • Gale H. Moore files an average of 2.9 motions per case vs Cody Emerson's 1.4 — a higher-motion litigation pattern for Gale H. Moore (1.5 more motions per case on average). Motion volume is a docket count, not a quality measure.

Documented Tendencies

Analyzed 2020–2026 Pinellas docket sample

  • 35 of Gale H. Moore's 77 sampled final judgments had a settlement agreement visible in the docket (45.5%).
  • 28 of Cody Emerson's 68 sampled final judgments had a settlement agreement visible in the docket (41.2%).
  • Gale H. Moore's sampled cases: 77 ended in final judgments, 4 closed without one (dismissed).
  • Cody Emerson's sampled cases: 68 ended in final judgments, 5 closed without one (dismissed).

Settlement figures count only settlement agreements visible in the docket — dismissals are not counted as settlements, and most private settlements never appear in dockets. This is a docket-visibility measure, not a win rate.

Judge Overlap

Case assignments in the analyzed 2020–2026 Pinellas docket sample — appearance counts, not outcomes

Both attorneys have appeared before 14 of the same judges in the analyzed sample. Appearance counts say how often each attorney has worked in that courtroom — nothing about results there.

JudgeGale H. MooreCody Emerson
Frederick L. Pollack28 cases58 cases
David R. Ellis21 cases57 cases
William H. Burgess III12 cases31 cases
Evan Frayman12 cases27 cases
Julie L. Sercus12 cases23 cases
Elizabeth Jack13 cases21 cases
Aaron W. Hubbard15 cases18 cases
Steve D. Berlin7 cases19 cases

+ 6 more shared judges with smaller appearance counts

Head-to-Head

These attorneys have faced each other in 5 cases.

5 final judgments · 0 dismissed

In those shared cases, Gale H. Moore was on the petitioner side 1 time and the respondent side 4 times — Cody Emerson the reverse.

All 5 cases reached final judgment — no early settlement or dismissal.

Most recent shared case filed 2023-09-26

Most Experience Against

Attorneys with the most documented cases opposite each of these two — useful if you are interviewing counsel and the other side has already retained one of them. Appearance counts are from public court records.

Opposite Gale H. Moore

Deduped head-to-head case counts, 2020–2026 docket sample

Opposite Cody Emerson

Deduped head-to-head case counts, 2020–2026 docket sample

Based on public court records covering 143 Pinellas County divorce attorneys, 2020–2026 · Data updated May 8, 2026 · How these rankings work