Do Lawyers Still Use Law Books? What Firms Keep in Print

Law firm libraries have been shrinking for years, as more of the law moves online. Lawyers still use books, though, and knowing which ones they still reach for tells you which of yours are worth keeping.

Do lawyers still use law books?

Yes, though fewer of them than before. In 2025, Legal Information Management, a journal for legal information professionals, published a report on a survey it sent to information professionals working at leading law firms. The report's summary begins: "The reduction in the size of print collections in law firm libraries has become a significant trend in recent years." And it gives the reason straight away: as digital resources become more widely available, firms are moving away from keeping large physical collections.

Home working has pushed the same way. An earlier article in the same journal, published online in 2021, looked at the falling need for print in UK law firm libraries during the Covid-19 pandemic, when working from home had become the preferred option to working in the office. A book on an office shelf is no help to a lawyer working at their kitchen table, and an online service works wherever their laptop is.

Print hasn't gone, though. The White Book, which holds the rules and practice for civil cases in the High Court and the County Court, still comes out every year in hardback. The 2026 edition was published in March 2026 in two volumes with supplements, and its publisher says it is relied upon in court by more judges and lawyers than any other legal text. Halsbury's Statutes is still printed too, with new volumes published as recently as October 2026.

What lawyers still keep in print

The books worth keeping on the shelf are the ones your team actually opens. Look for the current editions of the practitioner texts your lawyers use every week, the reference books that sit open on a desk while someone drafts, and the procedure books that go to court, like the White Book.

The courts also give the printed page a special place. The Practice Direction on citing cases, issued by the Lord Chief Justice in 2012, says that where a judgment is reported in the Official Law Reports, which are The Law Reports published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, "that report must be cited", because these are "the most authoritative reports". A lawyer can hand the court a photocopy of the printed report, or a copy of an electronic version the publisher has authorised. But "in any case of doubt the court will rely on the printed text of the report", unless the report's editor has certified that the electronic version corrects an error in the print. So the printed official report is still the version a court falls back on.

What has moved online

A lot of what used to fill a library can now be read on a screen, and some of it is free.

Find Case Law, run by The National Archives, is "the official and free source for judgments and decisions from courts and tribunals in England and Wales". Its coverage for most courts starts from the early 2000s. BAILII, the British and Irish Legal Information Institute, offers British and Irish primary legal materials, meaning the judgments and legislation themselves, for free, and the 2012 Practice Direction names it as a place to get official transcripts of judgments.

The courts also accept copies of law reports taken from an electronic version, where the publisher of the series has authorised it. So if your team already reads the reports online, a long printed run of them is a second copy.

Older cases are the exception to keep in mind. Because Find Case Law starts from the early 2000s for most courts, a firm working on older cases still needs another source for them, such as the law reports in print or the publishers' online versions.

What stops being worth keeping

A few kinds of book tend to outlive their use on a firm's shelves.

Old editions. Once a new edition of a practitioner text arrives, the old one is out of date, because the law has moved on since it was printed. Keeping both means the wrong one can end up in someone's hand.

Sets whose updates have stopped. Encyclopaedias and looseleaf works are kept current by supplements and replacement pages. When a firm cancels the updates, the main volumes stay fixed at the date of the last one, and anyone using them has to check every point elsewhere.

Runs you now read online. If the team looks up cases on a subscription service, the printed run is shelf space spent on a copy.

Books nobody has opened in years. Every metre of shelving takes up office space the firm pays for, so books nobody uses are costing money to store.

A book a firm no longer needs can still be worth something to someone else. A complete run of law reports or a set of Halsbury's is exactly the kind of thing we buy.

When a firm decides to clear the library

Start with the people who use it. Ask the lawyers which books they still open, and keep those. Then check that your online subscriptions cover what you plan to clear, so nobody loses something they rely on.

If the firm is merging or being sold, think about a valuation first. The Law Society's guide How to dispose of your library notes that law firms may want one before a merger or sale, so that the library can be counted among the firm's assets.

An office move can force the decision, because the books have to be either packed and moved or cleared. Our page on law firm library clearance covers that, and chambers have their own page on clearing a chambers library.

Can I sell my old law books?

Yes. We buy law book collections and sets: law reports, Halsbury's Laws and Statutes, encyclopaedias of forms and precedents, practitioner texts, journals and rare law books. We don't buy single textbooks.

You send us photos of the shelves or a list of the sets, and we value them for free. If the firm goes ahead, we pack the books it no longer needs in print straight from the shelves and collect them free from anywhere in the UK, and we can arrange collection from abroad too. The money for them goes into the firm's bank account. Where some of the books nobody opens have little resale value, we can talk about collecting those free of charge, so they stop taking up office space the firm pays for.

You can read how selling your law books to us works, and our checklist for preparing a law library for collection sets out what to photograph and what to arrange with the building.

Getting your library valued

Once the lawyers have told you which books they still open, photograph the shelves holding the rest, one bay at a time and close enough to read the spines. Send the photos through the valuation form or on WhatsApp to 07920 748314, and we will tell you which of those books we can buy.