"Hopefully, I am not wrong in assuming that in the common use (outside of legal contexts) it stills means 'a violent attack'?"

Yes,except that the problem here is that it is a legal term which has popularly come to be misunderstood legally.

Just like there's a UK company called Manga Max which distributes anime under the "Manga" label, but no manga. This then leads anyone using the term this way to talking about the wrong thing.

In the popular mind, a "shoving match" isn't battery. But of course the party who responds to an argument they dislike by shoving or even poking someone is committing battery. And if a prospective employer assumes that the batterer had to have bruised or bloodied the other party then that could have dire consequences.

No less so than the person who drew stick-figures going through life with the label of "child-pronzographer;" except that the batterer who poked someone with their index finger can refer someone to the evidence that is on file. And the evil producer of child rape pictures will never be able to point to the crude stick figure drawings unless their case is ever overturned.

Dante