Inherited Law Books: What They Are Worth and What to Do

Law books that come to you from someone else arrive with no explanation, and one row of matching volumes looks much like the next. Some of those rows are worth selling and some are not, and the spines alone tell you a good deal about which is which.

Here is what to look for on the shelves, how to spot a book that might be rare, what the estate's paperwork asks of you, and who will take the books away.

Are inherited law books worth anything?

Some are, and it all depends on what the books are.

We buy law books in collections and sets. Law reports are series of books that collect judges' decisions in court cases, one volume after another, often running for decades. Legal encyclopaedias, such as Halsbury's Laws of England, set the law out area by area. Practitioner texts are the books solicitors and barristers turn to when they advise a client. We buy all three.

For a set, what it is worth comes down to which set it is, whether the run has gaps, which edition it is and what condition it is in. Our guide to what makes an old law book worth something goes through each of those.

Single textbooks, the kind a law student buys for a course, are a different matter. We do not buy them, and an old edition has few takers, because law students are told to use the newest edition of a textbook. As the University of Sheffield's library puts it, "the law changes over time, as new Acts of Parliament are passed, and new cases are heard."

A small number of very old law books are worth money as rare books, and those are further down this page.

How to tell what you have inherited

You do not need to open a single book to make a start. Stand back from the shelves and read the spines, looking for three things.

The name of the series. The same title running along a whole shelf means you have a set.

The years or the volume numbers. For law reports, note the first and last years and whether any are missing in between, because a run with gaps is worth less: whoever buys it next has to hunt down the missing volumes.

The edition. Encyclopaedias and practitioner texts print their edition on the spine or the title page. It matters because the law keeps changing, so a newer edition is closer to the law as it stands today.

Some of the names you may see:

• The All England Law Reports, published since 1936.
• The Law Reports, the cases reported since 1865 in series such as Appeal Cases, Chancery, Family, and Queen's or King's Bench, and the Weekly Law Reports, which began in 1953.
• Halsbury's Laws of England, an encyclopaedia of the law in England and Wales. Its fourth edition came out between 1973 and 1987 in 56 volumes, and its fifth has been published since 2008 and runs to 103 volumes.
• Halsbury's Statutes, the companion set to Halsbury's Laws.
• The English Reports, 178 volumes of judgments from 1220 to the 1860s, published between 1900 and 1932.

The list of law books we buy names these series and many more.

Could any of the inherited books be rare?

A few might be. The Law Society's guide to disposing of a law library says that "legal books are more likely to be valuable if they were printed before 1800."

To check a book's age, open it at the title page. In early printed books, the date is usually at the bottom of the title page or at the back of the book, and it is often in Roman numerals. MDCCLXV, for example, is 1765.

Condition counts for a lot with old books. The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association notes that a book's condition makes a huge difference to its selling price, so if you think you have an old one, photograph its title page and the worst of its binding.

For books that do turn out to be rare, the Law Society suggests an auctioneer with experience of selling legal material, and names Bloomsbury Auctions, Sotheby's and Bonhams as auctioneers that deal with legal books. We buy rare law books too. If you think there is one among the collection, include it in your photos and tell us.

Do I need a probate valuation for law books?

If you are the executor, the law books are part of the estate, and the estate has to be valued before you apply for probate, if probate is needed. GOV.UK's guidance is to list the person's possessions, then find out or estimate what each was worth on the date they died, by working out how much you would have got if you had sold it.

Whether you need a professional to do it depends on the estate. GOV.UK says you can estimate the value of cheaper things, such as ordinary household goods. Where the estate's full details have to be reported to HMRC on form IHT400, it says you can get a professional valuation for anything worth over £1,500. GOV.UK also points out that most estates are not taxed.

It helps to know which kind of valuation you are asking for, and the Law Society explains the difference. An insurance valuation is the cost of replacing the books, a sale valuation is what you could expect to make by selling them, and insurance valuations tend to be higher. GOV.UK asks what the books would have sold for, which is a sale valuation. The Law Society names Bloomsbury Auctions and Wildy & Sons Ltd as organisations that value collections for probate.

Our free valuation tells you what we can pay for the books, which is a sale valuation. If you are unsure what the estate's paperwork needs, GOV.UK notes that you can hire a professional, such as a solicitor, to help with some or all of valuing an estate. Our guide to the probate valuation of law books goes through the forms in more detail.

If the estate has already been dealt with and the books have passed to you, they are yours to sell as you choose.

Who will take a deceased lawyer's law books?

We will, when the books make up a collection or a set. Clearing a lawyer's library for an estate with us starts with photos of the shelves, and you do not need to know what any of the books are first. We value the collection for free from photos or a list. If you go ahead, we pack the books from the shelves and collect them free, wherever they are in the UK, and if they are abroad, we can arrange collection from there. What we pay for them goes into your bank account. If the books were your husband's, our guide to what to do with a deceased husband's law books is written for that.

If some rows on the shelves turn out to have little resale value, ask us about collecting those free of charge too.

If you would like to give some of the books away, here are two organisations that take donations. The International Law Book Facility, a charity that gives second-hand legal books to not-for-profit organisations, accepts practitioner texts and university law textbooks. It turns down books more than ten years old, unless they are the last edition of a text, and you must contact it before sending anything. The Law Society library welcomes specific titles that would add to its collection, if you send it a list first. Our guide to donating law books has the full rules for both.

Before anything leaves the shelves, keep each set together where it stands, along with its supplements and index volumes, because they belong to the set. Our checklist for preparing a law library for collection covers the rest.

Getting a valuation for inherited law books

To show us what you have inherited, take a photo of each section of shelving, standing directly in front of it with plenty of light, so the series names and years on the spines can be read. Add a close-up of any book you think might be old or rare. Then WhatsApp the photos to 07920 748314, or send them through the valuation form, with the town or postcode where the books are now. We will value the collection for free and tell you which sets we can buy.