I called my Dad, a lawyer, as I was walking out of the courthouse to brag that I was officially 1-0 in trial and planned on keeping it that way.
I told him that I was upset all my preparation went to waste. He said it wasn't wasted, as you've said. Basically, in these types of areas... they just try to win the cases against the unprepared, and don't even bother with the people who are prepared. He said you'd be amazed how often that simply showing up prepared is sufficient to win without a fight. (he wasn't talking about tax assessment stuff in particular, just in general low-end legal stuff).
Your dad is absolutely right. I've been in court 4 times to date, all of those business related. Each time we were prepared to the hilt. One party didn't show, we won that one by default. The second had his case fall apart on the first day because of our evidence. #3 and #4 (both in Germany) took a little longer but we also won those.
For every one of those cases except for the 1st I'm pretty sure that it was our preparation that won the case, that plus the determination to see it through to the end. It helped that we were 'in the right' but that is definitely not always enough, you have to show that and you have to show it convincingly.
The more prepared you are, the less likely you will go to try. I spent a week preparing to depose the opposing party -- 15 minutes before it started, he offered us close to what we sued for.
I called my Dad, a lawyer, as I was walking out of the courthouse to brag that I was officially 1-0 in trial and planned on keeping it that way.
I told him that I was upset all my preparation went to waste. He said it wasn't wasted, as you've said. Basically, in these types of areas... they just try to win the cases against the unprepared, and don't even bother with the people who are prepared. He said you'd be amazed how often that simply showing up prepared is sufficient to win without a fight. (he wasn't talking about tax assessment stuff in particular, just in general low-end legal stuff).