Sarah Wade represents lenders, banks and borrowers in complex financing transactions and provides in-depth regulatory counsel to financial services clients.

Sarah has worked on behalf of financial institutions and other lenders and borrowers in connection with commercial lending transactions of all sizes and types. She has represented clients in connection with secured, unsecured, single lender, syndicated, asset-based, acquisition, and automobile floorplan lending, among others.

Sarah has a strong connection to the banking world and the specific needs of banking and finance professionals. After working for several years at a community bank, she served for nearly eight years as a bank examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Sarah taps her extensive regulatory experience to assist banks and financial institutions with day-to-day compliance questions, publicly traded financial institution disclosures, branch acquisitions and sales, bank mergers and acquisitions, bank holding company formations, trust company formations and the formulation of responses to bank examination findings. She also assists financial institutions in drafting internal bank policies to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

Sarah has also served as counsel for alcohol industry clients and provides guidance on the wide range of regulatory and corporate issues connected to the manufacturing and distribution of alcohol, including compliance with industry trade practices. She helps procure city, state, county and federal licenses and permits and certificates of label approval, and has negotiated and drafted commercial contracts on behalf of these clients, including contract and alternating proprietor production arrangements and wholesaler agreements.

  • Saint Louis University School of Law, J.D., magna cum laude, 2010
    • Editor, Saint Louis University Law Journal
    • Order of the Woolsack
  • University of Missouri-Columbia, B.S., cum laude, 2000
    • Business Administration

Admissions

Bar Admissions

  • Missouri
  • Illinois

Professional

  • American Bar Association
  • Missouri Bankers Association
  • The Missouri Bar Association
  • The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis
  • The Illinois State Bar Association

  • Listed in The Best Lawyers in America® (by BL Rankings), 2023-2025
  • Included in the “Missouri & Kansas Super Lawyers” Rising Stars (by Thomson Reuters), 2012-2019
  • Named an Up & Coming Attorney (by Missouri Lawyers Weekly), 2017