Lawrence W. Waggoner, Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law Emeritus, is a leading figure in law reform with both the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute in the fields of wills, trusts, and future interests. His ULC and ALI law-reform proposals have been adopted by the courts and legislatures in many American states and form the basis of law school courses in these fields nationwide.

For the Uniform Law Commission, Prof. Waggoner served as the principal architect and drafter of the Uniform Probate Code revisions completed in the 1990s. He recently completed another round of UPC revisions dealing mainly with the treatment of children of assisted reproduction. He was also the reporter for other uniform acts: the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities, the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act, and the Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts Act. A symposium on his work on the UPC was held at the University of Michigan Law School in October 2011. The symposium, titled "The Uniform Probate Code: Remaking of American Succession Law," was sponsored by the Foundation of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the Journal of Law Reform. Symposium speakers included law professors from law schools across the country.

For the American Law Institute, Prof. Waggoner serves as the reporter for the Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Other Donative Transfers. Volume 1 of the new Restatement was published in 1999, and volume 2 appeared in 2003. The third and final volume was published in 2011. Many judicial decisions have changed prior law or made new law on the basis of the first two volumes. There is every reason to expect that the third volume will be as influential.

In March 2012, Prof. Waggoner co-delivered (with Prof. John Langbein of Yale Law School) the Trachtman Lecture at the annual meeting of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. This is his second Trachtman Lecture. Prof. Waggoner previously delivered the Mortimer H. Hess Memorial Lecture at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and twice delivered the Tamisiea Lecture at the University of Iowa College of Law.

Prof. Waggoner graduated from Michigan Law and, as a Fulbright Scholar, earned a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford. He practiced law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City. As a captain in the U.S. Army, he served from 1966-1968 with other military officers from the Air Force, Marines, and Navy on a joint staff in the Department of Defense. He is a life member of the American Law Institute, an academic fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, an academician of the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law, and a life fellow of the Michigan State Bar Foundation. Prof. Waggoner came to Michigan from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1974. He retired at the beginning of 2012, after 44 years of teaching, 38 of which were at Michigan.