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.

MetricPatrick F. GaffneyPeacock, Gaffney & Damianakis PAKerya KoeutThe Law Office of Kerya L. Koeut, P. A.
Years licensedFlorida Bar4324
Pinellas dissolutions of recordAll-years dissolution-of-marriage cases317171
Active last 12 monthsCases filed in the last year620
Final judgmentsCases ending with a signed final judgment37151
DismissedCases closed without a final judgment311
Settlement rate *See caveat below — not a win rate56.8%39.1%
Cases with childrenCustody and timesharing involved20103
Expert-witness casesCases with experts in the docket1681
Motions per caseAverage filings per case3.82.2
HearingsDocketed hearings across cases
BadgesDeterministic, threshold-based — hover for criteriaVeteranHigh volumeHigh settlementVery 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

  • Patrick F. Gaffney has 317 Pinellas dissolution cases of record vs Kerya Koeut's 171 — 146 more cases of record for Patrick F. Gaffney. A larger count means more documented Pinellas dissolutions, nothing more.
  • In Hillsborough County, Patrick F. Gaffney has 36 dissolution cases of record vs Kerya Koeut's 19.
  • Patrick F. Gaffney has been licensed 43 years vs Kerya Koeut's 24 — a 19-year difference in time licensed, not a measure of ability.
  • In the last 12 months, Patrick F. Gaffney appeared in 6 newly filed cases vs Kerya Koeut's 20 — 14 more recent filings for Kerya Koeut.

Filing Style

Analyzed 2020–2026 Pinellas docket sample

  • Patrick F. Gaffney files an average of 3.8 motions per case vs Kerya Koeut's 2.2 — a higher-motion litigation pattern for Patrick F. Gaffney (1.7 more motions per case on average). Motion volume is a docket count, not a quality measure.

Documented Tendencies

Analyzed 2020–2026 Pinellas docket sample

  • 21 of Patrick F. Gaffney's 37 sampled final judgments had a settlement agreement visible in the docket (56.8%).
  • 59 of Kerya Koeut's 151 sampled final judgments had a settlement agreement visible in the docket (39.1%).
  • Patrick F. Gaffney's sampled cases: 37 ended in final judgments, 3 closed without one (dismissed).
  • Kerya Koeut's sampled cases: 151 ended in final judgments, 11 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.

JudgePatrick F. GaffneyKerya Koeut
Steve D. Berlin4 cases61 cases
Jack Helinger6 cases53 cases
Elizabeth Jack2 cases53 cases
Frederick L. Pollack15 cases21 cases
Brian Gnage1 case34 cases
Rebecca Hamilton2 cases31 cases
Benjamin Thomas1 case27 cases
David R. Ellis6 cases21 cases

+ 6 more shared judges with smaller appearance counts

Head-to-Head

These attorneys have faced each other in 3 cases.

3 final judgments · 0 dismissed

In those shared cases, Patrick F. Gaffney was on the petitioner side 2 times and the respondent side 1 time — Kerya Koeut the reverse.

All 3 cases reached final judgment — no early settlement or dismissal.

Most recent shared case filed 2025-05-12

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 Patrick F. Gaffney

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

Opposite Kerya Koeut

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