How to Get Rid of Thousands of Books From a Law Library

A few boxes of books fit in the back of a car. Thousands of law books fill a room, and most of the ways people clear a few boxes stop working at that size.

How to get rid of thousands of books?

Start with the size, because it decides everything else. Books are heavy, which is why removal firms such as PSS Removals, in the UK, tell you to pack them in small boxes only. PSS warns that a full large carton of books can weigh more than 40 kg, which is dangerous to lift and likely to make the box give way. U-Haul, the American moving company, reckons one of its book boxes holds somewhere between 10 and 15 larger hardbacks. At that rate, 3,000 law books fill 200 to 300 boxes, and every one of them has to be packed, carried out and loaded.

Law libraries reach numbers like that quickly, because law books come in sets. The fifth edition of Halsbury's Laws of England runs to 103 volumes on its own, and a set of the English Reports is 178. Add a few long runs of law reports and the shelves of practitioner texts, and a firm's library is soon counted in thousands.

So the way to get rid of thousands of books is to find one route that takes most of the library off the shelves in one go, and then deal with whatever is left. In a law library, the sets are where to start, because a single set can be a hundred volumes or more.

How do I get rid of a large amount of books?

You do not need to count the books or box them first. The first job is simply to see what you have, and a phone camera does that far faster than a pen and paper.

Work along the room one bay of shelving at a time, taking each photo from directly in front, in good light, so the titles on the spines come out clearly. Note roughly how many bays or metres of shelving there are, and the postcode of the building the library is in. If the library has a stock list or a spreadsheet, that works as well as photos.

As you go along the shelves, you will see the library falls into a few groups, and each group goes a different way:

• Sets and runs. Law reports such as the All England Law Reports and The Law Reports, and encyclopaedias such as Halsbury's Laws and Halsbury's Statutes.
• Practitioner texts. The reference books solicitors and barristers consult when they advise clients, such as Atkin's Court Forms and the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents.
• Student textbooks. Single books from a law degree.
• Anything very old. The Law Society's guidance is that legal books are more likely to be valuable if they were printed before 1800, and for those it suggests an auctioneer with experience of selling legal material.

Our guide to what to do with old law books goes through each group in more detail.

Selling a whole law library in one go

Selling to a buyer who packs and collects is the route that copes with thousands of volumes, because the packing and the lifting stop being your job.

That is what we do. 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. You send us photos of the shelves or a list, and we value the collection for free. If you go ahead, those two or three hundred boxes are ours to fill and carry. We pack the books from the shelves and collect them free from wherever the library is in the UK, and the money for them is paid into your bank account.

We buy collections and sets rather than single textbooks. Some of a library this size may have little resale value, and we can talk about collecting that part free of charge as well, so it does not have to stay behind on the shelves.

You can read how it works on our page about selling your law books. If the books belong to a firm, our page on law firm library clearance covers office moves, mergers and closures. If they are your own after a career in law, see selling your law books when you retire, and if you are clearing them for an estate, see clearing a late lawyer's library.

Donating thousands of books: what the rules allow

Donating is a good route for some law books, but the organisations that take them are selective, and that matters more as the numbers grow.

The International Law Book Facility, usually called the ILBF, gives donated legal books to not-for-profit organisations around the world. It takes practitioner texts, university textbooks, legal dictionaries and individual volumes of Halsbury's Laws no more than ten years old, among others. It does not take books more than ten years old unless they are the last edition of a text, law reports unless they are complete sets in bound volumes, or Halsbury's Statutes. You must contact it before sending anything, and it cannot pay the cost of sending the books to its store. With a few hundred boxes, that carriage is a real cost, and it falls to you.

The Law Society library takes donations of specific titles that would extend its own collection: you send it a list, and it tells you which it can take. It cannot buy books or cover your postage. If you look after a law library, BIALL, the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, has a Duplicates Exchange that gives you the chance, three times a year, to give away or sell unwanted materials and ask for items you want.

So donation suits the recent books from a few shelves. Halsbury's Statutes, books more than ten years old and incomplete runs of law reports fall outside the ILBF's rules, however big the library is. Our guide to donating law books sets out each route's rules in full.

Recycling thousands of books

Recycling is for the books that really are past use, and how you do it depends on whose books they are.

If the books belong to a firm or chambers, they count as business waste once you throw them out. GOV.UK's guidance on business waste says a business must keep waste to a minimum by doing everything it reasonably can to prevent, reuse, recycle or recover waste, in that order. It must also check that its waste carrier is registered, and complete a waste transfer note for each load of waste that leaves its premises. That order puts reuse before recycling, so selling or donating the books comes first, and whatever is left goes to a registered carrier. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own guidance, which GOV.UK links to.

If the books are your own, your council's recycling service will tell you what it takes and how. Some councils ask you to take the hard covers off before books go in the recycling, because the covers cannot be recycled; Bromley Council is one. With thousands of hardbacks, ask your council how it handles a large amount before you start.

A sensible order for clearing thousands of law books

1. Take the photos, and note any date the room must be clear by.
2. Send the photos to us for a free valuation, so you know which sets we can buy.
3. Meanwhile, check the recent texts against the ILBF's list, if you would like some of them donated.
4. Ask us about the part with little resale value before you arrange to recycle any of it.
5. Recycle only what is truly past use, through a registered waste carrier if the books belong to a business.

Our checklist for preparing a law library for collection covers access, parking and the rest of the collection day.

Getting a valuation

The valuation form takes up to twelve photos, so send it the first twelve and WhatsApp the rest of the library to 07920 748314. We value the books for free, so you know how much of the library we can buy before you plan the rest.