Where to Sell Law Books in the UK

"Where can I sell my law books?" doesn't have one right answer, and we're one of several options below, so read this with that in mind. The honest answer to "what's the best place to sell law books in the UK" genuinely depends on what you have, and sending everyone down the same path helps nobody.

Specialist law book buyers

Suits: complete or partial sets of recognised titles, and anything heavy.

The distinguishing feature is that a law-specific buyer values a run as a run. That matters more than it sounds. A complete set of All England Law Reports is worth considerably more than the same volumes valued individually, because its usefulness depends on being unbroken — and only a buyer who understands the material prices it that way.

The other practical advantage is collection. Law libraries are heavy enough that transport is a real cost, and specialist buyers absorb it.

Trade-off: you're selling to a trade buyer, so the price reflects that they then have to store, list and resell it. If you have the time and inclination to sell volumes individually yourself, you may realise more.

ISBN scanning services

Suits: modern textbooks with barcodes.

Several well-known services let you scan a barcode and get an instant price, with free postage. For recent student texts that's genuinely convenient and hard to beat.

Where it falls down for practitioner material: most bound law reports and older practitioner sets either predate ISBNs entirely or aren't in these catalogues. And because these services price per book, a complete forty-year run gets valued as forty separate second-hand books — which is a fraction of its worth as a set. It's the wrong tool for a chambers library, though a perfectly good one for a shelf of undergraduate texts.

eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree

Suits: single sought-after volumes, and sellers with time.

For a single uncommon volume this can work, because you're selling to an end user rather than a trade buyer.

The catch is weight. Bound law reports are among the heaviest books there are. Courier costs for a single volume are manageable; for a set they can approach or exceed what the books fetch, and you're the one packing and lifting. Local collection listings avoid the postage problem but shrink your buyer pool to people who'll drive to you.

Specialist consignment marketplaces

Suits: individual rare or notable volumes you're happy to wait on.

A handful of sites specialise specifically in used and rare law books, letting you list an item for other collectors and practitioners to buy directly. It's a genuine, legitimate route, and worth knowing how it actually works before choosing between it and a direct buyer: you list the book, a typical commission sits around 7.5% of the eventual sale price, and — this is the part worth checking carefully on any site before you commit — collection is often the buyer's responsibility to arrange, not the platform's, meaning you may still need to box and hand over the item yourself once a sale happens.

The trade-off is straightforward: no certainty on timing, since a sale only happens once a buyer chooses that specific item, and a commission taken out of whatever it eventually fetches. For a single distinctive volume with a niche following, that can genuinely be worth the wait. For clearing a working library at a predictable time and price, it's a much slower, less certain route than a direct buyer who pays immediately and collects for free.

What a listed price actually leaves you

The figure on a listing is an asking price, not a cheque. It is worth doing the arithmetic before comparing it with an offer, because the two numbers are not measuring the same thing.

Take a set listed at £1,200. Commission at 7.5% takes £90, leaving £1,110 — if it sells at the asking price, which is the number a seller has set rather than one a buyer has agreed. Before that, you have priced the set yourself, described its condition accurately enough that nobody disputes it later, and photographed it. After it sells, if collection is the buyer’s responsibility, you are still arranging a time for a stranger to come and take forty volumes off a shelf. And the whole sequence only starts when someone decides they want that particular set, which might be next week or next year.

The honest counterpoint, which matters just as much: a direct buyer will offer less than a retail asking price, and should. A dealer’s price carries their margin, their storage, and the months they are prepared to wait — that waiting is the service being charged for. Comparing a listing price against a direct offer is comparing a hoped-for gross with a certain net.

Which is better depends on one question: whether your set is distinctive enough that a specific buyer will come looking for it, and whether you can wait for them. For a rare or notable single volume, often yes. For a working library that has to be out before a lease ends, the certain net is usually worth more than the hoped-for gross.

Antiquarian and rare book dealers

Suits: genuinely old, rare, or notable material.

If you have pre-1900 material in good condition, a first edition of something significant, or a book with real provenance, this is a different market with different economics — and a specialist dealer will serve you far better than a working-library buyer.

We say this plainly because it's a real distinction: a set that's merely old usually isn't antiquarian. We've written separately on why age alone doesn't make a law book valuable.

Selling direct to students or smaller firms

Suits: people with time, contacts and patience.

Newly established practices and students genuinely need affordable reference material, and a direct sale cuts out the middle entirely. University law society noticeboards, local law society channels and word of mouth in chambers all work.

Trade-off: it's slow, piecemeal, and won't clear a room. Most people who start this way end up selling the remainder as a lot anyway, having spent months on it.

Where in the UK you are

For a specialist buyer the answer is the same everywhere: collection is free and arranged around you, so distance changes the logistics rather than the offer. Where you are does change what tends to be on the shelf, though. Chambers work clusters around the Inns and the circuit towns; commercial and shipping material concentrates in the big regional centres; university and court libraries turn up everywhere.

We have written up the cities we get asked about most:

• London — the Inns of Court, the City firms and the chambers around them. Selling law books in London.
• The North — Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle, where the circuit sets and the regional firms sit.
• The Midlands and the South West — Birmingham, Nottingham and Bristol.
• Scotland and Ireland — Scots and Irish law are separate systems, but English practitioner texts still turn up on those shelves. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin.

The list is not the limit. Everywhere we collect covers the rest, and collection is free whether or not your town has a page here.

Which route suits what

If none of the above quite fits, our fuller guide to what to do with old law books covers donation and recycling routes as well.

See the whole process, start to finish →