While billable hours remain low at transactional practices across the Am Law 100, associates are feeling the pressure to get their hours up as “performance-related” cuts threaten to end their employment.

Asked in a recent American Lawyer survey what they would change about the legal profession to benefit their mental health, just as many associates seemed to lament their inability to bill a full day as the number who are grinding under a pile of work. None of the survey’s roughly 1,500 associate respondents lauded their firm’s ability to deliver a steady workload that didn’t threaten to invade their personal life or put them on the chopping block as demand peaked and plummeted.