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Hey law schools and professors, lay off all those glossy magazines, mailers and article reprints, would ya?

That's the goal of a new initiative from two law schools that seeks to cut down on the amount of academic marketing materials that flood the mailboxes of law professors this time of year—before distribution of the reputational surveys used to determine the upcoming U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. The negative environmental impact of all that paper mail far outweighs the benefits, since most professors toss the materials without reading them, proponents argue.

"We get reams of magazines, flyers and postcards from our colleagues and law schools—many of whom we've had no contact with and we don't know how we got on these lists in the first place," said University of Missouri law professor S.I. Strong, who conceived of the Pledge to Reduce Academic Marketing Waste. "It seems kind of impossible to stop. It's massive—the amount of paper that is circulated unnecessarily. If we all just sat and thought what we can individually do to reduce it, that would be great."

The pledge is a partnership between Missouri and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, and it has been signed by nine law schools and more than 70 individual professors in less than a week. The pledge, which was unveiled on the International Day of Climate Action on Oct. 24, encourages law schools to rethink how they market their programs to other academics and find alternatives to traditional paper mailings. Among its specific recommendations:

• Reduce the size of paper mailings. For example, send a postcard instead of a magazine.
• Send paper marketing materials less frequently.
• Adopt an opt-in system whereby only those faculty who ask to receive mail will get it.
• Replace some paper marketing materials with online-based resources, such as emails directing recipients to articles online.

"A few people are saying, 'Well, people are less likely to read things in email,'" Strong said. "But I'm thinking, 'Well, they aren't reading it in hard copy either.'"

Complaints about so-called "law porn" are hardly new. Academics have been grumbling about the sheer quantity of marketing mailers for years. University of New Hampshire law professor Sarah Redfield, now professor emerita, in 2011 called on law schools to curb the use of glossy marketing materials that extol the virtues of their campuses. (A few defenders said the mailers help them keep track of faculty hires.) The following year, St. John's University law professor Larry Cunningham published an article that found little correlation between the amount of marketing materials a law school sent and improvements to its U.S. News ranking.

The marketing materials arrive throughout the year but are particularly cumbersome in the fall, due to the timing of the U.S. News reputation surveys, Strong said. (Results of the reputation surveys from legal academics account for 25% of a school's ranking score, while surveys from lawyers and judges are another 15%.)

"One law school acting alone might feel they are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage if they stopped doing what everyone else is doing," Strong said of the rankings. "I thought if we got law professors and law school on board en masse, it would create a critical mass to get change happening."

Pace offered to host the pledge online and update the list of law schools and professors who sign on because the mission fits in with the school's strong environmental law program. (Missouri does not have a program devoted to environmental law.)

"Signing the pledge is the latest move by our law school to reduce waste and promote sustainability practices," said Pace Law Dean Horace Anderson in an announcement of the initiative. "We were proud to have led the effort two years ago to nearly eliminate plastic use on our campus and promote other campuses to do the same. We are proud to lead the way again today to eliminate paper marketing waste."

Along with Missouri and Pace, the pledge has been signed by the University of Southern California Gould School of Law; the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law; Mercer University Walter F. George School of Law; Washburn University School of Law; the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law; Rogers Williams University School of Law; and Mexico's Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey.

Strong said ideally all American Bar Association-accredited law schools will sign on, but she said she would happy if at least half pledged to reduce their paper marketing.

"Everybody thinks their own materials are minimal and narrowly focused," she said. "But when you look at it as a whole, the sheer quantity of paper is overwhelming. It's not just the paper and the effect of the trees, but the carbon emissions associated with the production of these glossy goods, as well as the emissions dealing with the transportation of them. I'm not saying don't do any of it, but we need to be conscious about what we're doing."