What to Do With Superseded Halsbury's Laws Volumes

If your firm, chambers or library takes Halsbury's Laws of England, a new volume turns up every so often to replace one that is already on the shelf. The old one still looks perfectly good, so it tends to end up in a corner or a box while everyone decides what to do with it.

What does superseded mean for Halsbury's Laws volumes?

Halsbury's Laws of England is an encyclopaedia of the law of England and Wales, arranged by subject and published by LexisNexis Butterworths. Each main volume sets out the law as it stood when that volume was published. The law keeps changing after that, so when enough has changed in one area, the publisher reissues the volume that covers it, which means it prints a new, updated version to replace the old one.

Once the new volume is on the shelf, the old one is superseded, which simply means something newer has replaced it. The book is still in good order, but it no longer tells you the current law. Think of last year's bus timetable: every word is printed as clearly as ever, and you still would not plan a journey from it.

The main volumes are not the only thing that goes out of date. Between new volumes, two things keep the set current. The first is the Cumulative Supplement, a two-volume update published every year. The second is the Current Service, a pair of looseleaf binders, which hold loose pages instead of a fixed binding. One binder is the Noter-up, where pages issued through the year record changes in the law under the volume they affect, and the other, the Monthly Review binder, discusses those changes in more detail.

Each new Cumulative Supplement holds every update to the main volumes up to its own date, so only the latest one is needed. Last year's is superseded the day the new one arrives. New index volumes are published regularly too, to keep up with the reissued volumes, so old index volumes go out of date in the same way.

So on a typical shelf there are three kinds of superseded Halsbury's to look out for: main volumes that a reissue has replaced, old Cumulative Supplements, and old index volumes.

How the fifth edition superseded the fourth

Sometimes a whole edition is replaced. The fourth edition of Halsbury's Laws was published in 56 volumes between 1973 and 1987, with volumes reissued between 1988 and 2008 as the law changed. From 2008, the replacement volumes were published as the fifth edition instead, and they gradually took the place of the fourth edition's volumes.

The fifth edition arrived a volume at a time, so for several years a set that was kept up to date held fourth and fifth edition volumes side by side. You can usually tell them apart at a glance, because the fifth edition is bound in black and the fourth was bound in brown.

The fifth edition also reorganised its content, so its volumes are far more than updated copies of the old ones. That means you will not find a neat one-for-one match between the black volumes and the brown ones they replaced. If your set is a mix of the two, leave it standing as it is: anyone valuing it will read the spines where they are, and sorting dozens of heavy volumes by hand would be wasted effort. If your fifth edition set has lettered volumes such as 15A, our guide to Halsbury's Laws 5th edition volumes 14A and 15A explains why.

Should you keep the old volume when a reissue arrives?

Keep the reissue, since it is now the up-to-date volume for its subject. Keep the latest Cumulative Supplement, the Current Service binders and the current index volumes with the set as well. The supplement and binders bring the main volumes up to date, the index is how you find your way around them, and all of them belong to the set.

The superseded volume is worth keeping only if someone will need the law as it stood in the past. Because each main volume gives the law at the date it was published, an old volume is a record of what the law said then. If your work sometimes means looking back at the law in an earlier year, you might keep the old volumes for your own areas of practice.

If nobody is going to need that, the old volume is only taking up shelf space, and it can go.

Can you sell old Halsbury's volumes?

Halsbury's Laws is mostly bought and sold as a set, so the answer depends on what you have. Our guide to what an old edition of Halsbury's Laws is worth goes through what decides the worth of a set.

A whole set is the straightforward case, and that includes a set the fifth edition has superseded. We buy Halsbury's Laws of England in both the fourth and the fifth edition, so a full run of brown volumes is still a set we buy. Our page on selling Halsbury's Laws of England sets out what to tell us about your set.

Loose superseded volumes, taken out of a set that is still being kept up to date, are a different matter. Each one is a single volume from the middle of a set, and the volume that replaced it is the one a reader of Halsbury's needs. Include them in your photos anyway, so the valuation covers everything on the shelves. If the loose volumes have little resale value on their own, we can talk about collecting them free of charge, so they do not have to go back into the corner.

A few things help when a set is being sold:

• Keep the set together on its shelves, in the order it stands, so it can be seen as one set.
• Keep the supplements, the Current Service binders and the index volumes with it, because they are part of the set.
• Photograph the spines face on, in good light, so the volume numbers can be read and the brown fourth edition volumes can be told from the black fifth edition ones.

Our checklist for preparing a law library for collection covers the rest.

Halsbury's Statutes, the companion set, goes out of date the same way: its volumes are reissued when changes in legislation have a big enough effect on their subject. If you have it on the same shelves, see our page on selling Halsbury's Statutes.

Can superseded law books be donated or recycled?

Some superseded volumes can be donated. The International Law Book Facility, usually called the ILBF, gives donated legal books to not-for-profit organisations around the world, and it accepts individual volumes of Halsbury's Laws as long as they are no more than ten years old. So check the date on each volume: one published in the last ten years may be wanted, and an older one will not.

The ILBF does not take Halsbury's Statutes, supplements without the main work they belong to, or books that are torn, marked or in poor condition. That rules out a box of old Cumulative Supplements on their own. You must email the ILBF before sending anything, and it cannot pay the cost of getting the books to its store. Our guide to donating law books sets out its full rules.

If you run a law library, the BIALL Duplicates Exchange is another route. BIALL is the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, the professional body for people who work with legal information. Three times a year, its Duplicates Exchange is a chance to give away or sell unwanted materials, and to ask for items you want. If you are clearing superseded stock from a university, court or council library, our page for universities and institutions explains how we value and collect it.

Recycling is for volumes that really are past use, and at some councils hardbacks need one extra step. Bromley Council, for example, takes books in its household recycling once the hard cover is off, because the cover itself cannot be recycled. Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council also asks for hardback covers to be removed first. Check your own council's guidance before a set of hardbacks goes in the bin.

For the rest of a law library, our guide to what to do with old law books sets out every option side by side.

Getting a valuation for your Halsbury's

To find out what your Halsbury's is worth, send us photos of the spines, with the postcode of the firm, chambers or library where the set stands. We value it for free. If you go ahead, we pack the volumes from the shelves and collect them free from anywhere in the UK, with the money paid into your bank account.

Send the photos of your Halsbury's through the valuation form, or WhatsApp them to 07920 748314.