Fighting battles through protests seems like it is mainly a case of who can afford better PR companies, win the war of attrition and has a whole lot of luck along the way. In addition, at least with a court case you can be sure public opinion doesn't just forget about it in a few months and moves on to the next hot item to protest.
You're arguing a different point than I made. Legal systems are as averse to change as the large masses of society (ie very averse). They do move eventually btw, but it's more on the scale of decades than months.
What I was getting at is that protesting is not a very reliable way to effect change either. The "other side" of any protest is also trying to change the narrative and can often just wait out the protests. Look at how the various Occupy movements eventually dissolved after a few months because they weren't getting anywhere. Even the "main" camp (if one can talk about such a thing with Occupy) was eventually cleared by the police and didn't bother reforming somewhere else anymore. The gilets jaunes in France are currently experiencing the same problem.
I'd be quite interested in a way to reliably bring about societal change in a reasonable amount of time and in a morally defensible way, but I have not found any yet. Since philosophers have been debating this since the days of the ancient Greeks I'm a bit doubtful that this is the time when we'll finally figure it out.
Protesting is very effective when you do actual direct action and civil disobedience. Americans have gotten used to running ignorable police-sanctioned parades and calling them protests.
The court case is capital fighting capital. If it's the government, then it's the public's capital vs. private capital. The government is often at a disadvantage in this situation due to conflicts of interest and concerns over funds, as private capital is often far richer than anything the government can put forward.
Proper protests etc. are direct action by the people against capital. There are still disadvantages, but they can be drowned out by simple numbers.
