Where to Sell Old Law Books in the UK

Where you sell old law books depends on what they are. A student textbook, a run of law reports and a book printed in the 1700s each go to a different kind of buyer, and each of those buyers asks something different of you.

Can you sell old law books?

Yes. Specialist buyers like us buy law books by the set, so it helps to know what the sets are.

Law reports, such as the All England Law Reports and The Law Reports, are series of books that collect judges' decisions in court cases, one volume after another. Legal encyclopaedias set the law out area by area. Halsbury's Laws of England, for one, is an encyclopaedia of the law in England and Wales, and Halsbury's Statutes is its companion set. Practitioner texts, such as the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents, are the books solicitors and barristers turn to when they advise a client. We buy all of these.

What a set is worth depends on which set it is, whether the run has gaps, which edition it is and what condition it is in. Our guide to whether old law books are worth anything goes through each of those in turn.

We do not buy single textbooks, and they have a route of their own.

Where can I sell old law textbooks?

A single textbook from a law degree can go to a book buyback website or app. World of Books, which used to be called Ziffit, is one of them. You scan each book's barcode with your phone's camera, or type in its ISBN, and the site gives you a price. The ISBN is the International Standard Book Number, the book's own product number, a bit like the code on anything else you buy in a shop. If you accept the price, you print a free prepaid label and send the books off, and payment arrives within days. You need at least 10 items, or £5 worth, before you can complete a trade.

Two things can count against an old textbook.

The first is the edition. Law students are told to use the newest edition of a textbook, because, in the words of the University of Sheffield's library, "the law changes over time, as new Acts of Parliament are passed, and new cases are heard." So the older your edition, the fewer students want it.

The second is a missing ISBN. World of Books can only accept books that have one, and the ISBN only became an international standard in 1970. A law book printed before then usually has no number to scan, so it needs one of the routes further down this page.

If your textbooks are recent and in good condition, you can give them away instead. The International Law Book Facility, a charity that gives second-hand legal books to not-for-profit organisations, accepts university-level law textbooks. It turns down books more than ten years old, unless they are the last edition of a text. Our guide to donating law books explains how to offer them.

Where can I sell used law books?

For runs of law reports, sets of Halsbury's and shelves of practitioner texts, sell to a specialist buyer of law libraries, which is what we are. We buy the sets whole, and that matters once you see how big these sets are.

Halsbury's Laws of England runs to 103 volumes in its fifth edition, and the English Reports to 178. Selling a set like that yourself online means photographing it, listing it and answering buyers' questions. Then you either pack and post box after box of heavy hardbacks, or you offer collection in person and wait. eBay's help pages say many sellers offer collection in person "especially for large or bulky items", and until a buyer turns up, the set stays on your shelves.

Selling a set a volume at a time is harder still. Each volume you sell leaves a gap, and a run with gaps is worth less, because whoever buys it next has to hunt down the missing volumes.

With us, you start by sending photos, or a list if you have one. That is how selling your law books to us works. With the photos, tell us the town or postcode where the shelves are, and we value the collection for free. If you go ahead, we pack the books ourselves from your shelves and collect them free, anywhere in the UK, so there is no box for you to pack or post, even for a set of 178 volumes. We can arrange collection from abroad too. The money for the books goes into your bank account.

We buy collections and sets: law reports, Halsbury's Laws and Halsbury's Statutes, encyclopaedias of forms and precedents, practitioner texts, journals and rare law books. The full list of the law books we buy names the series one by one.

Where to sell rare and antique law books

A few old law books are worth money as old books, whatever law is printed in them. 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", and for those it points you to auction.

The Law Society names Bloomsbury Auctions, Sotheby's and Bonhams as auctioneers that deal with legal books. Before you choose one, it suggests you check that the auctioneer has experience of selling legal material, and ask to see the catalogue from a similar sale. It also suggests asking whether the auctioneer's catalogues are widely circulated, because that is how you can be sure your books will reach people who want them. Have a list of the books ready, with their editions and dates.

The other route is an antiquarian bookseller, a dealer in old and rare books. The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, the world's oldest trade association for rare books and manuscripts, lets you search its members by speciality and town, so you can look for one who specialises in law. When you get in touch, have the title, the author's name, the date of publication and the publisher's name ready, because those are what a bookseller needs to look a book up. Its book search shows what dealers are asking for books like yours, and it says to expect a bookseller to buy for a good deal less than that, to allow for their overheads and profit.

We buy rare law books too. If an old volume is sitting among a working collection, leave it in your photos and tell us you think it may be rare.

Where can a law library sell its stock?

If you are a law librarian clearing stock, the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) runs a Duplicates Exchange. The Law Society describes it as a way to give away or sell unwanted materials three times a year, and to ask for items you want. That timing suits a library that can wait for the next round.

If you would rather sell the stock in one go, our page on law library disposal for universities, courts and councils explains how we value and collect a library's stock.

What if nobody will buy your law books?

Some law books have little resale value, and you still need the shelves cleared. If part of your collection is like that, ask us anyway, because we can talk about collecting it free of charge.

You can also donate. The International Law Book Facility takes the recent books on its list, and the Law Society library welcomes donations of specific titles that would add to its collection, if you send it a list first. The Law Society library cannot buy books or pay your postage, though. Books that are falling apart, mouldy or water-damaged are for recycling. Our guide to what to do with old law books sets out all of these options side by side.

Getting a valuation for your law books

If you have a set or a whole library, the quickest way to find out what it is worth is to ask us. Photograph the shelves so every spine can be read, and put the photos through our valuation form or WhatsApp them to 07920 748314. We will tell you which sets we can buy, and the other routes on this page are there for anything we cannot buy.