Professor McLaughlin is a leading national expert on conservation easements and the tax incentives offered for their donation. Her research also focuses on the laws governing charitable gifts and nonprofit governance issues. 

Professor McLaughlin has published more than thirty articles as well as book chapters and reports on conservation easements and tax incentives and she lectures extensively on these issues. Each year, she organizes the virtual program, Trying Times: Conservation Easements and Federal Tax Law, which features her and five other panelists with extensive experience in the field. 

Professor McLaughlin is a member of the American Law Institute and served as Associate Reporter for the first edition of the Restatement of the Law, Charitable Nonprofit Organizations (Am. Law Inst. 2021), which addresses the law of charities as an independent and comprehensive whole and provides critical legal guidance to the people who donate to, benefit from, govern, and regulate charities.
 
Professor McLaughlin served as Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission's Uniform Conservation Easement Act Study Committee and as an Observer regarding conservation easement law for the Uniform Easement Relocation Act. She serves a member of the ABA's Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law Section and its Charitable Planning and Organizations Group, and she served on the Section's Conservation Easement Task Force, which published an extensive report on recommended reforms to federal tax law. She also serves as a professional editor for the Section’s academic law journal.
 
Professor McLaughlin is a member of the Board of Directors and Vice President of Utah Open Lands, a state-wide land trust, and a member of the Lands Protection Committee of Vital Ground, a land trust that conserves and connects habitat for grizzly bears and other wildlife. She served as a member of the Habitat Protection Advisory Committee of the national Wildlife Land Trust and on the Land Trust Alliance's Conservation Defense Advisory Council and as a member of its Conservation Easement Amendment Policy Group. 
 
Professor McLaughlin is also a Fellow and served on the Board of Regents of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC). She currently serves as ACTEC's representative on the Joint Editorial Board for Uniform Trusts & Estates Acts, as ACTEC’s Utah State Chair, and on ACTEC’s Charitable Planning, State Laws, and Legal Education Committees.
 
Professor McLaughlin consults with land trusts, landowners, government entities, federal and state regulators, and others regarding conservation easements and nonprofit governance issues. Her courses have included Trusts & Estates, Conservation Easements, Private Land Conservation, The Law of Charitable Gifts, Estate Planning, Federal Income Tax, and Gift & Estate Tax.