I think where disagree is that you are framing it as cases that would be lost, where as I am interpreting as talking about cases that may have been lost. The difficulty is that that "might" can be interpreted in different ways here. Thinking about it, I can see why your interpretation is reasonable. I think mine is a reasonable interpretation too, though.

your interpretation = "we wouldn't have won but we would have scared them"

my interpretation "we may not have won every case but the very fact that cases were prosecuted would have been valuable"