Sell Bound Legal Journals and Periodicals: What to Know

A run of bound law journals often grows by a volume every year, so a firm, a library or a lawyer who subscribed for decades can end up with whole shelves of them. If nobody reads them in print any more, they can be sold as a run, and you do not need to know much about them to start.

What are bound legal journals and periodicals?

A periodical is any publication that comes out in issues on a regular schedule, often numbered in annual volumes. A law journal is a periodical about the law: a scholarly journal focused on legal issues. Some have been running for a very long time. The Law Quarterly Review, published four times a year by Sweet & Maxwell, was established in 1885. The Modern Law Review dates from 1937, and the Criminal Law Review, a monthly also published by Sweet & Maxwell, began in January 1954.

The issues arrive one at a time, a bit like a magazine. To keep them, libraries have them bound: the issues for a volume are sewn together into one hardback, so they stay complete and the volume opens easily. A run of bound journals is usually all bound in the same colour of cloth, so you can see at a glance that the volumes belong together. Think of it as a year of magazines turned into one book with a spine.

On the shelf, a run of bound journals looks a lot like a run of law reports. The difference is inside. Law reports collect judges' decisions in court cases, while a law journal carries writing about the law. Both are sold as runs, which is why a buyer of law books looks at them the same way.

Do law book buyers buy legal journals?

We do. We buy law book collections and sets, and that includes journals, alongside law reports, Halsbury's Laws and Statutes, encyclopaedias of forms and precedents, practitioner texts and rare law books. Our list of the law books we buy names the Criminal Law Review and bound runs of law journals among them.

We buy collections and sets rather than single textbooks, and a run of a journal is a set: one title, volume after volume. A single stray volume of a journal on its own is a different matter, so photograph it alongside the rest of the shelves.

Can you still sell bound journals now they are online?

Yes, and online access may be the very reason you are clearing them. The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies describes HeinOnline's Law Journal Library, an online collection, as holding more than 3,200 law and law-related periodicals from 60 countries, with coverage beginning from the first volume. A library or a firm with that kind of access may no longer need the same journals on its shelves.

That is a good reason to clear the shelves, and it is no reason to throw the volumes away before someone has looked at them. Send us photos, and we value the run for free.

What decides what a bound journal run is worth

The same few things decide the worth of a journal run as any set of law books.

Which journal it is. Each title is a set of its own, and the title on the spine is the first thing a buyer reads.

Whether the run is complete. A run with no gaps can be sold on as a complete set. A run with missing years means whoever owns it next has to find those volumes, so gaps lower what it is worth. Gaps are worth stating plainly, because a buyer will see them in the photos anyway. Send the run even if it has gaps; the valuation is free.

Bound or loose. Bound volumes keep each year's issues together and complete. If the most recent years are still in loose issues, or a few years were never bound, photograph those too and say which years they are.

Condition. Water damage, smoke damage and mould lower the value of any set, and so do loose or broken bindings. Library stamps and labels are worth mentioning. A photo of the worst volumes tells a buyer more than a photo of the best.

Our guide to whether old law books are worth anything goes through each of these in more detail.

How to list a run of bound journals

You do not need to count every volume or take them off the shelf. Photographs of the spines tell a buyer almost everything, as long as each one is taken from the front, in good light, so the titles and years can be read. If you would rather send a list, these are the details that matter:

• The title of each journal.
• The first and last year or volume number of each run.
• Any years missing in between.
• Which years are bound and which are loose issues.
• The state of the bindings, including any water damage or library stamps.
• The floor the journals are on.

If the journals share the shelves with law reports or Halsbury's, photograph the lot. Our checklist for preparing a law library for collection covers the rest, from access to where a van can stop.

If your journals are not worth selling

Some runs will have little resale value, perhaps because of gaps, condition or the title. If one of your runs is like that, we can discuss collecting it free of charge.

If you look after a law library, the BIALL Duplicates Exchange is another route. BIALL is the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, and three times a year its Duplicates Exchange is a chance to give away or sell unwanted materials, and to ask for items you want. Our page for universities and institutions covers clearing a library's stock with us.

For the other routes, from donating to recycling, our guide to what to do with old law books sets them out side by side.

Getting a valuation for your journals

Tell us which town or postcode the journals are in when you send your photos, and we will value them for free. If you go ahead, we pack the bound volumes from the shelves and collect them from any part of the UK at no cost to you, and the money for them goes into your bank account. Journals are zero-rated for VAT, and our guide to VAT on second-hand law books explains how HMRC treats them.

The valuation form takes your photos, or you can WhatsApp them to 07920 748314.