The legal tech community might have to start purchasing its own stress balls. A movement called Gag-the-Swag is mobilizing in an effort to persuade conferences to scale back on novelty promotional items, or at least consider more eco-friendly alternatives.

Consider the awkwardly designed tote bags that everyone takes but almost never carry out in public. If they're not cluttering your closet than chances are they're taking up space in a landfill somewhere.

“It's almost always so much plastic stuff, and then the water bottles that are supposed to be reusable but then the lid doesn't work so you can't reuse it,” said Anna McGrane, COO and co-founder of PacerPro and one of the instigators behind the Gag-the-Swag movement.

McGrane and her four collaborators from throughout the legal sector have been probing their own personal networks to find conference leaders willing to institute if not a full-on ban, than at least an aspirational one that actively encourages vendors to reconsider their own footprint.

Dave Umlah, who works in business development for the Association of Legal Technologists, isn't sure which of those two directions they'll opt for yet.

“It's kind of funny, right? Because we just bought a lot of stuff to give away. So probably aspirational at first because we need to get rid of a lot of our crap,” Umlah said.

He thinks that many of the vendors that attend ALT's annual conference also have a backlog of swag that they'd like to unload. But once the garage is empty, so to speak, some might welcome the relief of not having to haul boxes full of thermoses around the country.

As for the attendees? Umlah anticipates there to be a pretty even split between the people who come to conferences specifically looking to stuff their suitcases full of free stuff and those who decline anything that's offered.

“I think it's more along the lines of people probably wouldn't care if stuff was given away,” Umlah said.

Guests might not have an opinion one way or the other, but The National Society of Compliance Professionals (NSCP) most definitely does. Executive Director Lisa Crossley still remembers the hotel staff at the organization's last conference bringing her a big box of random swag, a gift from the event's 60 exhibitors.

“When you look at it a lot of it is just trash. It's just like is somebody really going to use this squishy ball?” Crossley said.

For the record, NSCP ended up giving the box back to the hotel staff. Where it went from there is anyone's guess. In anticipation of its next conference in October, the organization is asking vendors intent on bringing giveaways to consider eco-friendly alternatives.

NCSP isn't the only legal sector behemoth looking to make changes. The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is also in the process of evaluating its approach to swag and how it might become more environmentally aware.

“We're very conscious that there's a social responsibility component with all that and we're trying to come up with some ways to respect that because to me it's core to our mission as volunteers,” said ILTA CEO Joy Heath Rush.

McGrane already has some thoughts on what eco-friendly swag replacements could look like, and they bear an uncanny resemblance to e-gift cards or the opportunity to make a donation to a charitable cause.

Still, conference halls have been shilling water bottles and t-shirts for a long time, a habit that isn't likely to be broken overnight. McGrange acknowledges that bringing about large-scale change will be difficult.

“I think that one of the benefits of pursuing a project like this is that even if we get a couple of conferences to go along and start doing this, that's some of the environmental impact that has be minimized,” McGrane said.