We get this question often enough to answer it properly: our catalogue is England and Wales law, so why do we bother collecting from Scotland at all? Because English law materials are more common north of the border than people expect, for reasons worth understanding.
Why this happens
A handful of genuine reasons account for most of it:
- Dual qualification. A number of practitioners qualify or practise in England before moving into Scots law, or hold qualifications in both jurisdictions. Their libraries reflect both careers.
- Cross-border and UK-wide work. Firms handling matters governed by English law, or acting alongside English counsel, keep English reference material for exactly that purpose.
- Comparative and academic collections. Scottish universities and chambers with an academic bent hold English texts for comparative law purposes, not day-to-day practice.
- Inherited libraries. A set bought decades ago, before a firm's practice areas settled, often just stays on the shelf.
Where Scotland's legal profession actually sits
It helps to understand the shape of the profession itself. Scotland's supreme courts — the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary — sit in Edinburgh, at Parliament House, home to the Faculty of Advocates and the Advocates Library. Glasgow, despite being Scotland's largest city, handles the bulk of day-to-day case volume through its own courts, but the profession's centre of gravity remains Edinburgh — Optimum Advocates is, unusually, the only chambers of the Faculty of Advocates actually based in Glasgow rather than Edinburgh.
Glasgow's solicitors are served by the Royal Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow, which holds the largest law library in the West of Scotland. None of this is English law — but it's worth knowing the landscape before assuming a Scottish firm's library is purely Scots material. It rarely is.
Not sure whether what you have is English or Scots law? Send a photograph of the shelves — that's genuinely enough for us to tell.
Get my free valuation →What's worth having valued
Exactly the same titles we buy anywhere else in the UK: Halsbury's Laws of England, the All England Law Reports, and the practitioner texts that sit alongside them — see the complete list. The same rules on completeness, edition, and condition apply, covered in more depth in are old law books worth anything?
What we don't buy
To be direct about it: we don't buy Scots law materials. The Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia, Session Cases, or any other Scots-specific text isn't our catalogue, and we'd rather say so plainly than take something we can't properly value. If a collection turns out to be genuinely Scots law throughout, a Scottish legal bookseller or the Royal Faculty of Procurators' library would be a better first call than us.
Have a mix of English and Scots material, or just not sure which is which? Tell us what's there and we'll sort out what's ours to buy.
Get a valuation →Common questions
FAQ
Do you buy Scots law books?
No. Our catalogue is England and Wales law specifically — Halsbury's Laws, the All England Law Reports, and the practitioner texts that go with them. We are not the right buyer for Scots law materials such as the Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia or Scots-specific case reports.
Why would a Scottish firm have English law books at all?
The most common reasons are dual-qualified practitioners who trained or worked in England before moving to Scots practice, firms handling cross-border or UK-wide matters, academic and comparative law collections, and historic libraries inherited from an earlier era of the firm or chambers.
Do you collect from Glasgow and Edinburgh?
Yes, for the English law titles we buy specifically. We collect across Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the wider Central Belt.