Legal Aid advice and help

Hey. So I have an assault charge stemming from a relationship going pear-shaped. I have legal aid and I'm looking for some info or input about general criminal legal advice.

I've read a little around our laws including self-defence and indicated to the lawyer that if it were possible, I'd like to defend the charge.

Now, my lawyer has the summary of facts, as well my short police statement and a long pdf of me detailing what happened on the evening everything went down.

I've had a first appearance and the lawyer advised to plead not guilty (because I want to defend the charge, if possible).

I have a case review hearing in a couple weeks and with that my chance for early guilty plea and sentence reduction would be gone.

I've talked to the lawyer again trying to get an indication of how likely it is for that defence to work. I'm weighing up fighting the charge (ie the likelihood of succeeding), and the reduction for early guilty plea (ie the heft of the sentence if found guilty).

Lawyer seems unable to give me a straight answer around how possible or likely this is. Says no lawyer who says "100% I'll get you off" is worth their word. I get that - but a lawyer must have some idea how likely a defence is to work with all the facts in front of them?

But I feel like it's a simple legal test, and that I should be able to get more info or input from the lawyer?

Lawyer says to do whats right for me, do what feels right, use my intuition, etc.

But I don't know whats right for me, and feel like I'm getting less useful input or opinion than I'd like.

I have two questions: First, should a lawyer be able to give me more guidance or input around defending a charge if they have the info?

Second, do legal aid lawyers just care less or have limited time/resource to put into a case? Like I can't imagine paying someone $400/hr to tell me to use my intuition and do whats right for me without any real legal input.

Thanks for any advice or help here.