<p>lawyers often communicate with other lawyers, their clients, the courts, other governmental bodies, etc. through writing. writing is an essential part of the job.</p>
<p>the most important skill is to be able to effectively communicate your conclusion or positions in clear compelling succinct matter. sometimes it is your job to inform (eg writing to client or senior attorney), sometimes it is to pursuade (eg. writing for a court). </p>
<p>the type of writing is probably different than anything you’ve done before. the merit of the writing isn’t judged by length – the people you are writing for generally don’t have the time or desire to be bogged down with more length and extraneous detail than is necessary. but then again, just writing, “the applicable law is X” generally isn’t enough. its a real skill to learn – to write enough to explain, but not too much that your point gets lost (sometimes when you’ve read dozens of cases to come to a conclusion, its hard to convince yourself that you really don’t need to thoroughly explain ALL of them when you are writing your conclusion 
).</p>
<p>the ultimate length of what you need to write will vary based on what it is you are writing. some issues/cases are more complicated and a lengthy memo/brief will be necessary to address all the issues.</p>