T.E. Lawrence's brother, A.W. Lawrence, was the sole beneficiary of Lawrence's estate and his copyrights. In 1936, he set up two charitable trusts to control the royalties from his brother's residual copyrights. The copyright for Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an autobiographical account of T.E. Lawrence's wartime experiences, was assigned to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust (world rights, excepting the United States of America). The copyright for T.E. Lawrence's letters and T.E. Lawrence by his Friends (1937) was assigned to the Letters and Symposium Trust. The two trusts were combined in 1986 under the name Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust. The income of the Trust went towards grants for archaeological, environmental and academic projects in acknowledgment of T.E. Lawrence's career as an archaeologist. Following the death of A.W. Lawrence in 1991, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust acquired the copyright for all of T.E. Lawrence's works that they did not already have, including the posthumously published The Mint, as well as the works of Professor A.W. Lawrence himself. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust was wound up in 2023.

The trustees also administered requests to view the Papers of T.E. Lawrence which had been given to the Bodleian Library over a number of years from 1939 onwards. The papers were given on condition that they could be consulted only with written permission until 1 January 2000, from which point on the Bodleian administered all requests relating to the collection.

Note: A separate trust, the Revolt in the Desert Trust, was set up by T.E. Lawrence in 1926 to receive royalties due from his Revolt in the Desert (an abridged version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom), with surplus funds after the payment of debts going to the RAF Memorial Fund, later RAF Benevolent Fund. This included the Lawrence of Arabia Educational Fund (before Lawrence's death, it was known as The Anonymous Education Fund) which was inaugurated with a donation of £15,000 and was used for educational purposes for children of RAF officers with preference given to the children of officers who had lost their lives or been invalided whilst on active service or duty. Lawrence expressly wished that there was no further publication of Revolt in the Desert until the copyright in the work had expired, which occurred in May 1960 in England (March 1955 in America). When copyright law changed in 1998, it was decided that the copyright would have reverted to A.W. Lawrence and as all his remaining copyrights were inherited by the Seven Pillars Trust the Revolt in the Desert Trust was not revived.