I know next to nothing about real-life judicial systems, and there are a few things in the games that are puzzling me, so I hope that someone more knowledgeable than me can help me understand.

See, in AAI case 4, Edgeworth is supposed to have his first trial. And by the way he and Manfred talk about it, it seems to be a very rare opportunity.
Then when that trial is canceled, Edgeworth's actual first trial takes place 5 months later.

That's something I have trouble understanding, as I assumed that prosecutors would spend most of their time preparing trials and standing in court. And it can't take that long to prepare a trial, especially with the 3-day system.

So my questions are: is it normal for a prosecutor to spend so much time outside of the court? Is standing in court such a rare occurrence? And more importantly, just what are they doing the rest of the time? How long is it supposed to take to prepare a trial? Besides, I assume a prosecutor can be assigned to several cases at the same time?

On a side note, the same question could be asked for lawyers. Phoenix had, like, 13 trials in 3 years (unless there were more cases that weren't shown in the games). Is that normal? How often do lawyers stand in court? Do state-appointed lawyers get more cases? Etc.

So if you have any insight about this, or even just guesses, please share. Thanks.

Well...I imagine as a disciple of Von Karma Miles puts meticulous amounts of efforts into preparing his cases which may mean a little slow time as he picks and chooses cases carefully. However to explain the distance between Mile's two cases....

Perhaps it was simply a logistics issue with no case being deemed low profile enough to allow a rookie to handle it (the media would have an outcry if the verdict was disappointing or the trial was flawed) or perhaps Mannfred didn't allow Miles to attend another case for a while. Since on his first case not only had the guilty got away but it was a defence attorney as well (something Mannfred hates) and so he refused to set up Miles with another trial for that less-than-perfect display.

---

I'd go in the opposite direction: Manfred wanted Miles' first trial to be a high-profile one, e.g. a homicide, and there wasn't one available until 3-4.

On that note, the AA universe seems quite inconsistent with regards to its crime rate (even given that these things change over time). In AAI-4 the KG-8 II trial is apparently the only one being conducted for the whole week (and they have multiple courtrooms, so even if they have a backlog of trials they should be able to conduct them in parallel). Five years later, in 1-4, Phoenix says that the three-day limit was instituted because the crime rate was too high for lengthy trials. A decade later, in AJ, the black market no longer exists and the police can just walk into a crime lord's house and take all their guns. What.

---

Clearly after Lang's investigations in AAI they hired him as a consultant to improve their forces and thus the police force is considerably improved by AJ? XD

Also considering Mile's first trial was against a rookie defence attorney, perhaps the cases are matched based on the perceived prosecution/defence's skills initially so as to account for a learning curve for rookies. The reason for the gap could be that there were no opponents suitable to pair him with.

Considering what you were saying about how Mannfred would be filtering out low-profile cases in favour of a high-profile homicide case (which are unlikely to have rookies involved with them) then it explains how the cases might be somewhat rare for him to get his first trial.

---