1) The overall aim of civil pre-trial procedures is to resolve some issues and clarify them so that time is saved in court. Also, pre-trial procedures promote out of court settlements which can speed up the process. However nifty lawyers (especialy big companies') often use them to slow down the process so that a financialy weaker party may be unable to continue with the suit.
I thought that was another advantage of pre-trial procedures, that they are cost-efficient and lawyers aren't required (which if it isn't the case, i guess you'd be right). Hm, I really didn't pay attention to legal last year as I was studying for my 3/4, but correct me if I'm wrong:
Within pretrial procedures there is conciliation, mediation (which are very similar) and a few other things [which i cannot remember].
Both of them involve the parties talking things over and attempting to reach a conclusion without either of them having to go to court.
It sometimes then happens that one of the parties (perhaps defendant or plaintiff [are pre-trial procedures only for civil law?]) decide that they cannot win the case and so settle for whatever they can..