Professor McCoy's research interests focus on the nexus between financial products, consumer welfare, and systemic risk. She has testified before Congress and been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post and on National Public Radio. She has three books to her credit, the most recent being The Subprime Virus with Kathleen Engel, published by Oxford University Press in 2011. In A Tale of Three Markets: The Law and Economics of Predatory Lending in the Texas Law Review in 2002, Professor McCoy was among the first to raise alarms about the dangers of subprime loans. 

In 2010 and 2011, Professor McCoy joined the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where she helped form the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and, as the CFPB’s first assistant director for mortgage markets, oversaw the Bureau’s mortgage policy initiatives. Professor McCoy clerked for the late Hon. Robert S. Vance on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and was a partner at Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., specializing in complex securities, banking and constitutional litigation. She also served on the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Advisory Council and on the board of the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association. In 2012, the American Law Institute named her as an Adviser to the Third Restatement on Consumer Contracts. She currently sits on the Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.