Donating Law Books: Who Takes What in the UK

Giving law books to people who will use them is a good instinct, and there are organisations set up to do exactly that. Each one has its own rules, though, and the books most firms want to clear are often the ones they cannot take.

This guide sets out who takes donated law books in the UK, what each of them accepts, and what to do with the books that fall outside the rules.

The International Law Book Facility

The International Law Book Facility, usually called the ILBF, is a registered charity, number 1112628. It provides second-hand legal books to not-for-profit organisations, and printed legal texts to institutions involved in access to justice around the world. It was founded in 2005 by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.

Its donation guidelines are specific, and worth reading before you pack anything.

What the ILBF accepts

• Practitioner texts on all civil and criminal practice areas, including public and private international law, comparative law and the conflict of laws.
• Specialist texts on jurisprudence, legal method and statutory interpretation, advocacy and legal careers.
• University-level law textbooks on all subjects, including cases and materials books.
• Legal dictionaries such as Words and Phrases Legally Defined and Stroud's Judicial Dictionary.
• Legal encyclopaedias, including individual volumes of Halsbury's Laws that are no more than ten years old.
• The Digest, Atkin's Court Forms and the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents.
• Civil and criminal procedure texts from 2024 onwards, including evidence books.

What the ILBF does not accept

• Books in poor condition, or books that are torn or marked.
• 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, and even then you should check with the ILBF first.
• Unbound weekly parts of law reports.
• Halsbury's Statutes and Halsbury's Statutory Instruments.
• Civil or criminal procedure texts from before 2023.
• Statute-based materials such as company handbooks.
• Scots law materials and the Current Law Citator.
• Supplements to major works when the main work is not included.
• Non-legal books, and UK solicitor or barrister directories.

How to donate to the ILBF

You must contact the ILBF by email before sending anything, describing the books so it can check them against its criteria. Once it approves them, it gives you the address of its storage facility.

Before the books go, remove any highlighting, pen or pencil notes and sticky notes, pack multi-volume works together in successive boxes, and attach a contents list to the outside of each box. The ILBF cannot reimburse the cost of sending the books to its store, so the carriage is yours to arrange and pay.

The Law Society library

The Law Society library welcomes donations of specific titles that would extend its own collection. Send it a list of what you have and it will tell you which it can take. It cannot buy books or cover your postage, because its priority is its existing collection.

BIALL's Duplicates Exchange

The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians runs a duplicates exchange through which libraries give away or sell unwanted materials, and ask for items they want. It is mainly used by law librarians, so it suits institutions clearing stock more than individuals.

What the donation routes leave behind

Read the ILBF's rules next to a typical firm or chambers library and the gap is plain. Runs of bound law reports, Halsbury's Statutes, older editions of practitioner texts, and anything more than ten years old are what most of those libraries hold, and they are what the donation routes turn away.

Those are the books we buy. We value collections from photos, buy the sets that have a resale value, and collect them free from the shelves, anywhere in the UK, so there is no carriage for you to pay. Where part of a collection has little resale value, we can talk about collecting it free of charge so the shelves are still cleared. The books go back into use through our own shop, Law Book Sellers, and to new law firms, libraries, students, colleges and charities, including in developing countries.

A sensible order, if you want as much of the library as possible to be used again:

1. Check the recent practitioner texts and textbooks against the ILBF's list, and offer the Law Society library any titles it may want.
2. Send us photos of everything else for a free valuation.
3. Recycle only what is really past use.

You can get a free valuation here, or read about what to do with old law books more generally.