The next stage is to try to identify the officials who composed laws on the emperors behalf with writers or public figures known from other sources. In Emperors and Lawyers eight likely or possible identifications are put forward and since then a ninth has emerged as a result of the finding of a new inscription (No.7 = Licin(n)ius Rufinus). In Law in the Crisis of Empire twenty-four likely or possible identifications are proposed. So the method contributes to the study of personalities (prosopography) in the later Roman empire by filling out their careers with at least a few texts composed by them. Sometimes there are more than a hundred such texts.
The method, though criticised by some scholars, has proved remarkably robust. This is shown by the fact that in Emperors and Lawyers secretary No.19, whom the author had not identified, was successfully shown by another scholar, Detlef Liebs, to be the legal author Arcadius Charisius and by the new inscription which has led to the identification of secretary No.7 as Licinnius Rufinus.