The cases were collected and copied by a private secretary who worked in the provincial judge offices in the years 1815-28—a period during which he says he wrote several thousands of judicial documents. He selected cases that were unusual or difficult; he also copied interesting cases by other authors. The arrangement of the work, by eight categories of crimes with a variable number of subcategories, is explained in the “general categories” (zonglei 總類) listed at the beginning and further commented in the fanli. Next comes a “general mulu” (zongmu), which details each entry of j. 1-14, all devoted to the category “homicide”; the same contents are found at the beginning of each juan, and j. 15-38 also have their detailed mulu. The categories include homicides (ming’an 命案), injuries (shangren 傷人), bandits and robbers (daofei 盜匪), escaped prisoners (shiqiu 失囚), accusations (kongjie 控訐), miscellaneous cases (zayan 雜讞), crimes committed by officials (zhiguan 職官), and administrative punishments (yichu 議處). The cases are in the form of Ministry of Justice (or Ministry of Personnel in the last two categories) communications (zi 咨) or memorials quoting the Guangdong governor memorial on the case, commenting on it and proposing a decision. They are introduced by a detailed caption; the relevant category of crime is indicated in the central margin.