David Westfall, who held the John L. Gray and Carl F. Schipper,Jr. professorships at Harvard Law School, died at home on December 7, 2005, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. He was 78.

He taught at Harvard Law School for fifty years and possessed wide ranging expertise in labor law, family law, and estate planning. He was the author,co-author, and editor of a number of scholarly publications. His volume on family law was published in 1994, and the fourth edition of his casebook and supplement on Estate Planning Law and Taxation with George P. Mair and Rebecca Benson appeared in 2001. He was also an academic fellow of the American College of Trust & Estate Counsel, and a member of the Boston Probate and Estate Planning Forum.

In a statement to the Harvard Law School Community, Dean Elena Kagan said: ''Before he became a colleague, David was a teacher of mine, and he was always exceedingly generous to me. I will miss him, as I know a great many of you will. David served this school devotedly for 50 years, and we should all be grateful.''

He was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1927. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Missouri in 1947, and received his L.L.B. in 1950 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review and graduated at the top of his class. He practived law at Bell,Boyd, Marshall & Lloyd in Chicago from 1950 to 1955.

He joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1955, and became a tenured professor of law in 1958. In 1980, he assumed the John L. Watson, Jr. chair, which he held until 1983, when he became the John L. Gray Professor of Law. Since 1996 he had occupied the Carl F. Schippers,Jr. chair.

He is survived by his sister, Ellen W. Mering of Tuscon, Arizona; his four children, Elizabeth S. Westfall of Washington, D.C.; William B. Westfall and Thomas C. Westfall of Somerville, Massachusetts, and Katharine Westfall Blake of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and two grandchildren, Nathaniel and Benjamin Westfall Wiener. A memorial service at Harvard Law School will be scheduled for after the new year.