Measurement of the free neutron lifetime with a precision on the order of 1 s (0.1%) has been demonstrated to be experimentally feasible, and a robust measurement at that level of sensitivity would serve to remove the neutron lifetime as a significant source of systematic error in understanding implications of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis for new physics. The current uncertainty in our knowledge of the neutron lifetime is, however, significantly poorer, dominated by a nearly 4-sigma discrepancy between two complementary measurement techniques: the "beam" approach, which detects the products from in-flight decays within a beam of low-energy neutrons, and the "bottle" method, which measures the number of surviving ultracold neutrons (UCN) following confinement in a suitable trapping potential. An incomplete assessment of systematic effects is the most likely explanation for this difference, which must be addressed in order to realize the potential of current experimental technology. A number of candidate systematics unique to UCN bottle experiments are known, including, for example, the presence of loss mechanisms associated with UCN-matter interactions, the possibility of untrapped UCN populating quasi-stable orbits inside the trap, and the possibility of detection efficiencies which couple to the phase space evolution of the trapped UCN population. The UCNtau collaboration has constructed a large-volume magneto-gravitational trap that eliminates material interactions inside the storage volume by using a ~1 T magnetic field, created by permanent NdFeB magnets in a bowl-shaped Halbach configuration, to trap UCN from the sides and below, and the earth's gravitational field to trap them from above. Used in conjunction with a set of novel in situ UCN detectors that monitor filling and rapidly count surviving UCN after storage, this configuration is expected to reduce systematic effects associated with previous bottle measurements, which utilized material traps. We have demonstrated that our bottle has a long intrinsic storage time and that, when coupled to the Los Alamos UCN source, is capable of producing repeated measurements with statistical uncertainties at the one second level. I will discuss that work, along with our ongoing efforts to investigate directly the residual systematic effects associated with our experimental configuration. These studies will lead the way towards a next generation of experiments capable of ~0.01% precision, a sensitivity target relevant for direct tests of new physics at the TeV scale.